Honour and hubris - the Saliaminsky case
by Librarian Astelan
Summary: In this story a young pilot of the Aeronautica Imperialis learns the consequences of honour and pride. Both in battling the Xeno as her own demons.
1. Chapter 1: Drop off

_+++5.455.988.M41+++_  
_+++Vandahl-2, subsector Orcus, Sector Carceris, Segmentus Obscurus+++_  
_+++Enemy controlled airspace - Imperial Guard Valkyrie M/502+++_

Bianca 'Bunny' Saliaminsky stared out of the armourcrys windows of her Mastiff-pattern Valkyrie into the darkness. Occasionally she saw bright yellowish flashes on the ground below her, mostly artillery fire from the 533th, 687th and remnants of the 211th artillery regiments. There were hell blue flashes too, although far more sporadic, originating from the Xenos lines. Her copilot, Victorina, whistled between the wide slit between her two front teeth. The young woman was still easily impressed. After all, the slightly chubby junior lieutenant was still a rookie, fresh from flight school. Bianca had seen far worse, but could still empathize with her younger comrade in arms. "Pretty, ain't it Vic? I bet you'll think differently the first time you'll get some flak," she said cheerfully. 'Or when you're supposed to land right in the middle of such a bombardment.' Bunny thought with a smile on her face. She remembered vividly how she had needed to pick up an isolated guard squad while earthshaker rounds were exploding just 3 clicks away. Despite the distance, they had still been showered with dirt and she still saw before her how the instrument board of her bird had shaken in its sockets, the needles of the dials rocking from left to right, not at all corresponding with the true values they were supposed to indicate. When they had set off, she had felt quite a rush. Even though the action had almost cost her her wings - Command had strongly advised against the action on the basis that a measly squad of guardsmen wasn't worth risking a Mastiff - she still felt proud and happy for doing it. Just like every mission that brought her over the battlefield gave her a feeling of glory.

A crackle of the on board vox channel made her focus. "Arriving at drop zones in two minutes, bank 30° right on my mark." She rogered and awaited the count of Gomez, the navigator. He and she had flown together for a long time and she knew she could blindly trust his directions. Especially on a mission like today where they were flying with the entire flight. She knew GZ would be extra careful not to break formation. Although the tail lights were doused, Bianca could still see the outline of the transports before her. She held the outer left position of the formation of heavy transports. Bianca sat up in her chair, which had yellowish foam stuffing of the back cushion bulging out at the side. Things were about to get interesting. "Inform the peeps that they're about to get out from under our wings, lieutenant." Bianca commanded. "Sergeant Gomez, keep an eye on our auspex. The Xeno must have picked up on us and will definitely want to take a stab at us." She got a quick roger from Gomez while Victorina gave the commissar at the back of the bird a heads up. Now that they closed on their objective, all her senses were on high alert. She wasn't one of the freshmen guard troopers that came imprinted with the doctrine that they were superior to the Xeno, nor was she a zealous general that dismissed the alien beforehand out of misplaced pride. The tip of her tongue slipped out of her mouth and went from left to right, moisterising her lips, just like she did every time when she felt the familiar rush. 'You'll beat them yet again.' Bunny thought, pulling at the throttle and slowly bringing the Mastiff in line with the other transports. She sent a short vox message to the four gunners to stand ready. She could control the loading ramp and hatches from the cockpit, but she knew that the four bulky crewmembers appreciated their autonomy. The lance-corporal in charge of the gunnery crew had shown her on her first day with the Mastiff the difference between the pilot's perspective and theirs. And she had agreed that the armourcrys view slits, however small, still gave them a better view on their surroundings than her position at the cockpit.

Gomez gave the one minute signal. Even though she was continuously making small corrections to their course and controlling the angle of their descend to half a degree, she could still muse about the reason why Command had decided that her flight, the Hercules Chariots, would execute this mission. The drop zone had only been a 150 clicks away from base camp which made it a bit silly to send in the heavy Mastiffs. After all, the planes were built to do long distance missions. They were easily one and a half times as big as a regular Valk, creating room for a navigator - you needed one if you went of base's auspex control - extra fuel tanks and two extra gunnery stations. One at the top of the plane and one right under the tail. They still had just two engines, but to compensate for the extra weight they had been tuned to the max of their ability. It still made the Mastiff a bit sluggish, but she compensated that with extra amour and defense. Apart from the gunners, Victorina could still use the quadlinked autocannons in the nose and two ASM's that were attached under their wings. Not that those babies would help them fight off any bandits, but they could sure make a mess of any flak emplacement if it should prove necessary. All weapons had their full complement. Bianca had known other, more desperate times, when they were only given half because of supply issues. This time though, they were on the offensive and giving the Xenos hell. Which made it extra strange that the Mastiffs were put in action for this mission. As far as Bianca knew, the other Valk flight from the squadron hadn't faced any major losses so it should have gone to them. "15 seconds to touch down." GZ reported, disturbing Bianca's thoughts. "Roger." she said, focusing on the drop zone. The men and women of the 101th were lucky. Only 200 metres away lay the treeline, only vaguely visible in the starlight. "Going to full VTOL." Bianca said, trusting Victorina to help with the manoeuvre. Over the on board vox, she heard lance-corporal Miroslav barking his orders to the other three gunners. Five seconds to touch down. She shivered. Landings behind enemy lines always were a bit hairy.

The Mastiff hit the ground. Softly. The main ramp had already been opening and even over the din of the engines, she heard the metallic sound of the two side doors being slid open. "Good hunting, commissar." she sent over the vox, getting a not very inspiring or original 'For the Emperor' as reply. Bianca had no idea what their mission orders were, but being dropped behind enemy lines with this force, certainly meant that it was no simple observation mission. The peeps, as Bianca called the guardsmen she transported, also had been pretty nervous, so there was a good chance that they were prepped for live action. The drop zone was supposed to be secure though, although Bianca never put much trust in intelligence reports. Especially when it came to the Eldar. Those sneaky bastards always managed to blindside you one way or another. As the last of the guardsmen were jumping out of the Mastiff, Bianca looked over her shoulder to her navigator. "Nothing on the auspex yet?" Then she adressed her copilot. "Anything from base, Vic?" Both of them shook their heads. Bianca cursed softly. "Frag." Victorina gave her a short questioning look, but GZ seemed to share her concern. "Let's go, let's go, let's go." Bianca whispered, as if she only wished hard enough, her flight leader would hurry up. But Major Vinnius, or 'Vinnie' as his friends called him, always did things by the book. Exactly the reason why Bianca always called him by his rank and Vinnius never called her Bunny. The major liked to play it by the book, convinced as he was that the book provided for the safest course of action. Bianca liked to wing it a bit more - she was a pilot after all - which had made her clash with Vinnius more than once. It wasn't that she hated him, or that she found him stupid. In fact, if she had had a few amasecs and was among her peers back at the mess, she would even admit that sometimes his approach was the better one. And luckily, she had also found out that sometimes, rarely, Vinnius wasn't holding on to the Tactica Imperialis and would follow his gut feeling. The fact that they were both still alive after having clocked over three thousand combat flight hours meant that they both knew what they were doing.

"Lift off." came his command half a minute later. The seven black and grey cameo patterned Mastiffs slowly rose into the air. "Keep your eyes open for bandits. Remember who we're dealing with here." Bianca rogered and asked GZ for the course when suddenly she saw a glitch overhead. "Bandits! Bandits! Two o'clock of my position. Vic looked up from the instrument board. GZ cursed. "Nothing on the auspex." Bianca hadn't waited on GZ to confirm her sighting. Instead she was banking hard to the left to give the next pilot in the formation more room to manoeuvre. She pushed the lever that controlled the thrust of the VTOL system up to the maximum, making the Mastiff roar deeply as it made its way over the guardsmen that were scrambling to get to the treeline. "Can anyone confirm that visual?" asked Vinnius over the vox, his voice tense but clear. Bianca wanted to yell at him that he should give the order to disperse. The other pilots remained silent. "Captain Saliaminsky, do you still have a visual?" the major asked next. She couldn't see them anymore. 'But that doesn't mean they aren't there.' she thought. She just wanted to tell him as much, when bright blue flashes passed her bird, slashing right through another Mastiff, riddling its left wing and cockpit roof. A second later the Imperial transport was blown up, the explosion lighting up the airspace. The Eldar fighters were clear to see for anyone now, their cloaking device apparently not able to adapt to the sudden burst of light from the explosion. "All gunners, fire!" Vinnius commanded. Immediately thereafter, tracer rounds lit up the sky. Deadly lines of bolt shells criss-crossed each other. The gunners were well trained and knew when to hold their fire so they wouldn't hit another Mastiff. The sleek Eldar ships were too fast though and easily dodged the deadly sprays and picked off another target, although they only managed to damage it. Bianca didn't really pay attention. She let the shooting to her gunnery crew and occupied herself solely with a speedy return to the Imperial lines.

"Course for home!" she yelled at Gomez as another transport was pierced by the blue Eldar fire. The guardsmen on the ground had noticed how the Hercules Chariots were in trouble. Some of them kneeled and put their lasguns to the shoulder, tracing the sky, looking for a target. The meagre las fire they unleashed was nowhere near enough to concern the Xeno pilots. "How many are there Bunny?!" Victorina asked with a shrill voice. "No clue." Bianca answered. "Probably not that many." Another one of the Mastiffs exploded in a big red ball of fire. "Not that they need many." Bianca looked straight ahead. She saw another glitch in the night sky. "Fire!" she yelled. Victorina didn't. "On what? There's nothing there!" Bianca didn't have time for the rookie. Instead she let go of her throttle with one hand and squeezed Victorina's hand, pressing her thumb firmly on the red firing button. The Mastiff shuddered ever so slightly as the four autocannon barrels spat out their deadly payload. Sure enough they hit one of the enemy's fighters, the volley catching it in the flank. A second later, the thing was spiraling out of control, disappearing in the forest canopy. "Frak yeah!" Victorina yelled enthusiastically. Bianca couldn't supress a grin at her co-pilot's outburst even if she knew the rookie was way too nervous. GZ gave her a course and with one eye on the multicompass on her instrument board, Bianca gave her Mastiff the spurs. The four other transports were doing the same. But all of the veteran pilots knew that there was no way that they would be able to outrun their opponents.

"Defensive formation penta!" Vinnius commanded. Bianca nodded, approving of his decision. The five Mastiffs would fly in a five pointed star pattern, each with their own field of fire, each able to cover two other transports. She took the left back position of the formation, the major took point. Bianca kept her eyes open, trusting them more than the machine spirit of GZ's auspex. "We've brought down one of those fraks already, let's tally up the score!" she said calmly over the on board channel. The gunners replied with a firm 'frak yeah'. Lance-corporal Miroslav even went as far as saying 'bring 'm in our sights Bunny!'. They were a tight bunch after all. Bianca switched off the channel and grabbed the lieutenant next to her by the shoulder. "When I tell you to fire, you fire. Got it Vic?" Bianca knew they didn't have long before the Eldar would have reorganized. Lieutenant Victorina Klönner was the newest member of the group and therefore the least reliable. She needed to get her shit straight. She nodded, blushing, but Bianca couldn't use such half-hearted responses at this moment. "Got it?!" she yelled, her mouth wide open, little specks of spit spattering on Victorina's face, not unlike a Guard drill sergeant. "Yes captain!" she yelled back at the pilot, immediately looking away and focusing on her tasks. Bianca did the same. And hoped that it would be enough.


	2. Chapter 2: Dogfight

They flew on in silence, but half a minute later, Bianca noticed something moving underneat her. "Bandits coming up from below." Immediately, lines of tracer fire poured out of the five remaining Mastiffs, creating a tangle of explosive rounds. One of the Eldar pilots couldn't evade the defensive fire and the tail of its plane exploded in a million wraithbone splinters. The aircraft broke off the attack and left the formation to the west. The other fighters opened fire. The hell blue flashes tore through the formation, destroying an already damaged Mastiff and killing two of the gunners of Vinnius' transport. With a third transport on a crash course with the surface, the other four changed formation to a rhombus. "I've counted at least three more." Bianca reported, both to her own gun crew as Vinnius. "They'll try to come from our sixes, using the elevation. Bank right on my signal!" the squadron leader commanded. Bianca looked over her shoulder to Gomez and the auspex screen. Anything that could help her anticipate the attack. But the machine spirit seemed to be in an awfully contrary mood. The green screen remained devoid of red dots indicating enemy crafts. She ached her neck looking through the canopy to the night sky and again she caught on a glitch. They weren't coming down on them. They were flanking them. Vinnius had grossly underestimated their speed. Instead of giving the gunners a better chance of hitting them, his manoeuvre would just leave open their tails. "Four, Three, Two, ..." Vinnius counted down. "No, bank left and open fire!" Bianca interrupted, practically screaming over the vox. She followed her own command, pushed in the pedals to control the rudders and with a sharp turn, as sharp as the Mastiff could handle, she pointed her nose at the enemy formation. "Fire Vic!" she yelled enthusiastically. This time the co-pilot didn't hesitate. The Mastiff shuddered again as the autocannons barked. The fire penetrated the cabin of the middle fighter. Bianca hoped it was the enemy leader. The plane didn't explode, but it took a sharp nose dive straight to the surface.

The other pilots had followed Vinnius' command though. While the major was cursing Bunny, the fighters closed the distance and opened fire. Only the top turrets had any chance of hitting the enemy and with only three planes in formation, it became much harder to use fire patterns that covered the entire formation. Still, one of the two remaining Eldar pilots managed to completely miss his fat target. The other one had a better aim. The left Mastiff got sprayed by the Xenos cannons. Armour plates were torn off. Then the right engine got peppered with the blue flashes. Immediately it started smoking. And not a harmless white vapour whiff, but a thick black smoke. Gunner first class Rasvik who manned the heavy bolter on the right, reported it in and Bianca knew that her fellow pilot was in big trouble. He no longer had the power to effectively perform any evasive manoeuvring. If he wanted to make it to base, the other three Mastiffs would have to escort him home, which in turn, limited their own chances. The pilot could set his bird down, but they were still at least a hundred clicks from their own lines. Not to mention the fact that such a landing would make him especially vulnerable to enemy fire from the Xenos fighters. Major Vinnius had come to the same conclusion. "I'm sorry Igor, but you'll have to make it on your own. Saliaminsky, fall in dammit!" Bianca didn't reply. Vinnius' orders were logical, but they would be the death of Igor. She finished her 180 and sped up to catch up with the other three planes. The Xenos were invisible once more, probably readying themselves for another attack run.

The cockpit crew had all heard the major's commands. Bianca felt Gomez' eyes burning in her back. Vic just kept focused on her instruments. "I'm with you, Bunny." the navigator said. "We don't leave no Chariots behind." Then lance corporal Miroslav cut in. "How about it Bunny? Are you giving us something to fire on?" She sighed. She knew that they could hold off the last two bandits, but it also meant disobeying a direct order. Finally, she made up her mind. "That's a negative, commander. I can't seem to catch up with you. Something's wrong with my left engine. My chances will be better if I stick with Igor." She took a position a dozen metres above Igor's Mastiff, thirty metres behind him. This position blocked his top turret's gunner, but it also was the best shield if the Eldar would try and go sit on their tails again. Vic gave her a quick scared look, her chubby cheeks still blushing, but then she concentrated on her own tasks. The vox line remained quiet for a second. "Last chance captain. Fall in." Victorina wanted to speak up, but Bianca made a short chopping motion, cutting her off. "I can't comply with that order, major." The lieutenant at her side looked at her incredulously. "What are you thinking? We'll be exectuted the moment we touch down. Fall in!"

Bianca wanted to tell the rookie that they weren't just your average guardsmen and that she had pulled shit that had been far worse, when she caught another glitch. "They are flanking us from the left. Bank left, bank left!" Igor complied immediately. His gunners opened fire and from the back of the plane, she heard how her crew was doing the same. Both parties evaded each other's fire. At that point, Vinnius sent a dry 'good luck' and closed the channel. GZ reported how they sped up and were leaving them behind. 'Good.' Bianca thought, 'More kills for us.' She retook her position over Igor's tail. "Come on, Igor. Let's give them hell." Igor's reply wasn't nearly as enthusiastic, but he didn't have much of a choice in the matter. "Next time, we'll go after them." Bianca informed her crew. Half a minute later the two remaining fighters were back on her tail. "Dive Igor. Get yourself scarce." She pressed her back against her seat. "Hold on to your knickers, boys. We're gonna brake." Gomez immediately grabbed hold of his little instrument table. Miroslav sent a quick and nervous roger. Victorina didn't seem to know what Bianca was up to and simply tightened her grip on her throttle. Bianca looked at the small pictscreen in the middle of the instrument board which showed a live feed of a little pict capter built in the tail.

The enemy fighters were just hazy dots, but she could see their outline. She kept staring at them, intent on anticipating their move. She didn't dare blink. She swallowed and got goose bumps. Then, in a fraction of a second she thought she saw a blue flash coming from the left plane. Immediately she pulled her stick forcefully towards her, sending the Mastiff in a steep climb. "Engaging VTOL!" she yelled and she violently flicked the yellow switch that changed the trust of the engines. "Noooo!" Vic yelled. A red warning light started flashing and a shrill alarm blared through the cockpit. Engaging VTOL capacity in mid flight was not within the standard operating protocols of the Mastiff's main machine spirit. To say the least... "We're gonna fall out of the sky!" the lieutenant yelled. At that point the nose of the transport pointed bolt upright. The two pilots were pressed firmly in their seats. Gomez had braced himself, hooking his legs around his fixed chair. In the hold the four gunners hung in their harnesses, holding on tightly to their guns, their feet dangling towards the tail of the Mastiff. They all felt a knot in their stomachs. The feeling of a free fall. Something you never wanted to feel in a plane. The tail gunner yelled over the vox. "They've missed. Their shots passed under us." Gomez chimed in. The stubborn machine spirit of the auspex had decided to cooperate at last. Or perhaps it was just that the fighters were closer now. "They'll pass us in three seconds." Bianca waited another two before flicking the yellow switch again and pushing her throttle away from her. "Level her Vic!" The now pale faced rookie obliged and wrestled with her stick. "Fire on my mark." Bianca felt how the Mastiff was falling in line. "Fire!" Lieutenant Victorina Klönner pressed the red button again. The autocannons barked. The massive slugs chewed up the wing of the Xenos leader. The plane started drifting and lost altitude fast.

"Booya!" Bianca yelled. "Like flying a Lightning!" Her enthusiasm was contagious. With a big grin on his face, GZ gave her a course to catch up with Igor. Not all were as easily afflicted though. Victorina was rapidly regaining her colour, her rage making her blush. "Shut it." Bianca commanded. "And try to pick something up, will you? We can't show you this stuff every day." The lieutenant turned vermillion but kept her mouth shut. Bianca set the Mastiff in a dive to come at the same level as Igor. She retook her position over his tail. "You're frakking crazy, Bunny." Igor sent, "but thanks anyway. We owe you one." Gomez smiled. "Just one?" Bianca's grin got a bit wider. "We're not out of the woods just yet Igor. There's still one bandit left. And you know these Xeno bastards don't quit. Let's keep our eyes open." Igor rogered and cut the line. Bianca looked over her shoulder at Gomez. "Have you still got him?" "Negative." the navigator replied, "This thing is as trustworthy as a PDF draftee." Bianca sighed. "Eyes open everyone. There is still one on the loose." She didn't mention that the Xenos might just as well have called in another patrol. Although she rather doubted more fighters would turn up. The Eldar were already on the back foot and there hadn't been too many to begin with. If intelligence was to believed. She didn't go as far as to immediately dismiss everything intel reported - quite a few commanders did, most of them having been ambushed after having received 'solid' intelligence from the service - but she never took things at face value. It was like one of her instructors, captain Tibbits, had once told her: "hope for the best, but prepare for the worst Saliaminsky. That way, you'll never be surprised." She also remembered how he added a bit late and with a rather cynical tone "Or at least, less surprised."

The minutes slid past in silence. Bianca trusted in lance corporal Miroslav's crew to keep on the lookout. Gomez was fiddling again with the plasrub studs of his auspex unit, cursing softly under his breath every now and again. Lieutenant Klönner was still too abashed to talk. After another two minutes, Gomez scraped his throat. "You think he left?" Bianca didn't look up. "How long till we reach our own lines?" The navigator didn't need to check. "Twenty minutes." "And how long until we reach our flak cover?" Bianca asked, although Gomez knew she already knew the answer. "Five more." Bianca shrugged. "Then that's when the bastard is going to give up. And even then you're not sure." She checked the pict screen of the tail pict capter. "Although it would be quite audacious of it to try." Igor checked in as well, wondering whether they had picked up the last bandit. Obviously, he shared Bianca's concerns, especially since he could do even less to defend against the threat.

As they flew on in silence, Bianca could feel how the focus of her crew was dwindling. Vic had regained her normal colour while GZ had given up on the auspex and was now checking their course. From the back of the plane, she had heard how Miroslav had asked to secure the weapons. Although she didn't like it, she couldn't do too much about it either. You couldn't keep a combat crew sharp if there wasn't a threat. Through the canopy, Bianca only saw an empty starlit sky and a few cloud banks to the north. Although they were thick enough for the enemy to hide in, she doubted he would. His stealth capabilities were more than enough to keep them guessing anyway. She wondered whether they should change course, but that would inevitably keep them above the enemy lines longer. She decided against it. And if the frak was hiding there, they would give him a warm welcome. "We've got cover coming up on our left side, lance corporal." Miroslav sent a quick roger, putting the guns back off safety even though the clouds were way beyond their reach.

Bunny kept checking her field of vision, hoping to catch another glitch. Half a minute later she caught on to something. She didn't understand it, but instead of seeing an actual disturbance she felt it. "Break!" she yelled through the vox. She threw the stick to the right, completely unexpectedly. "Break Igor! Break!" Gomez had been thrown of his chair and over the vox came the cursing of some of the gunners who hadn't seen the manoeuvre coming either. Igor's Mastiff started to turn, but it was too late. More blue fire went through the fuselage, punching glowing red holes in the metal armour plates. Worse, now Bianca could actually see the bandit, she noticed how he was adapting his course and speed to Igor's to finish him off. 'Hope you can take this dear.' she thought, adressing the Mastiff's machine spirit. She swung the stick back again, causing the rookie next to her to scream again. "You're putting us in his field of fire! Fraaak!" She ignored the lieutenant once again. "Miroslav, hold your fire. I'm gonna end this." Bianca's manoeuvre did exactly what Vic had expected. A few seconds later they heard the impact of the Eldar fire on the armour plates at the back of the ship. Victorina started to give a damage report, but Bunny told her to shut it. Again. "Not interested right now." She pushed the throttle to the left which put the tip of the right wing up.

The Mastiff wasn't built to do barrel rolls, but Bunny counted on the Eldar not knowing that. As soon as they came in the danger zone, she threw her stick to the right, levelling the plane out. Her goal had been achieved though. They had only suffered minor damage and more importantly, had taken the hunter of Igor's tail. His Mastiff could no longer withstand the punishment and would now have been nothing more than a fiery ball of metal. "Asser!" she yelled in the vox, adressing her tail gunner. "Give me a shout when he's on our tail. And for frak sake, hold your fire. GZ started formulating a question. "Shouldn't he..." She broke him off. "Vic. Get ready for emergency fuel dump." And to knock out every ounce of hesitation out of the junior officer, she added. "Or, by the Emperor I swear, I'll be dumping you out of the plane." She kept an eye on the little pict screen. She could almost imagine the Eldar opening fire. And then she saw it. "Dump it now!" Against all her better judgement, lieutenant Victorina Klönner gave a firm pull at one of the more sturdy handles overhead. At the back of the plane, two slids clicked open and a mixture of liquid promethium and gas left the plane in an instant. The Eldar fired. The blue energy blasts lit up the promethium, creating a fiery explosion. In the middle of his flight path. Even the supernatural reflexes of the Eldar weren't enough to dodge the explosion. His fighter flew in and caught fire, before exploding. "Throne!" Asser yelled. "You got him!" The rest of the gun crew burst out in cheering.

In the cockpit however, the minds of the Imperials were focused on something else. Energy sparks were dancing all over the instrument board. GZ, his hands on the auspex controls, got zapped. Bianca and Victorina could see how the dials were shaking. The screen of the multicompass lit up brightly and then shorted out. The altitude metre started spinning, completely out of control. Victorina screamed out yet again. GZ grunted in pain. Bianca cursed wholeheartedly. "Instrument failure!" she yelled. "Vic, check the engines!" Without the metres, Victorina unbuckled herself and sprinted to the back. "You alright?" Bianca asked her navigator without averting her eyes from what lay ahead. GZ's fingertips were burned. "I'll manage." he answered. "Think you can keep this thing in the air?" Bianca didn't answer, which was enough for an answer to Gomez. There were still blue sparks dancing over the instrument board, but the sergeant would swear that they were dying out. A ping of his auspex made him focus on his own instruments. "My auspex' machine spirit seems to be back online Bunny." The pilot remained quiet. Gomez looked over his shoulder. "Are you alright?" It seemed that his captain was lost in thoughts. Then Vic stormed back into the cockpit. "The engines are doing fine. They are running smoothly." Apparently the still somewhat shrill voice of the lieutenant was enough to shake Bunny from her thoughts. "Instruments seem to be restored... Where's Igor?" Bianca went back to business, ignoring Gomez' question. "We're not out of the woods just yet."

* * *

Author's note: Inspired by "Alerte atomique", Jean-Michel Charlier & Victor Hubinson, 1967


	3. Chapter 3: Pulling rank

_+++5.455.988.M41+++_  
_+++Vandahl-2, Subsector Orcus, Sector Carceris, Segmentus Obscurus+++_  
_+++Imperial Guard temporary airfield 108 'V-Rock' - Landing path HD-4+++_

They stood on the heavy duty landing pad in the harsh white light of the high poled floodlights surrounding it. A ground crew, riggers and fitters, were already crawling over the Mastiff, busy with the first reparations of the armour plates and the reloading of its guns. They had voxed the Mechanicus ahead, but the cogheads hadn't sent an engineseer or techpriest just yet. Bianca didn't mind too much. She wasn't planning on doing another mission immediately. And if Command would give her one, she was pretty sure that Vinnius would ground her anyway. She had just sent Miroslav and his crew away. They could use some well earned sleep, even though she suspected that they would first find a bottle of dryké to empty. Gomez was still in the cockpit of the Mastiff, doing the inevitable paperwork for the Departemento Munitorum. Which left her alone with lieutenant Victorina Klönner. And from the looks of it, she wasn't too happy with Bianca. But instead of giving voice to her concerns, the somewhat chubby lieutenant was biting on her lip and was doing a commendable effort to convince Bianca that she was watching over the ground crew.

Bianca took two steps and stood next to her. "Anything on your mind?" she asked, not really interested in whatever the rookie might be thinking, but they would soon be flying together. 'A divided crew, is a crew to be shot down.' Bianca thought. Another one of captain Tibbits' wisdoms she relied on. Victorina didn't respond immediately. She seemed to be mulling something over. "If you're worried about major Vinnius, I can reassure you." The lieutenant looked away. Bianca stepped in front of her. "You will learn that pilots are a pretty valuable commodity around here. And pilots who consistently manage to bring home their planes are even more rare. Fortunately, the Emperor has provided us with a commissar that knows this too." In reality, Bianca knew that commissar Marcks wouldn't hesitate for a second to execute a pilot, however decorated, if that pilot was guilty of treason. But luckily Marcks knew the difference between disobedience and insubordination on the one hand and treason and desertion on the other. Bianca had had a few run-ins with Marcks, but even more than with major Vinnius, Bianca enjoyed a relatively good relationship with the commissar.

Victorina still didn't look her in the eyes and Bianca was getting a bit annoyed. "If anyone is going to get reprimanded for this, it's gonna be me, Vic. Your slate will be clean. But I'm telling you. Another lecture of Vinnius isn't gonna stick. Things might have been different if we wouldn't have brought Igor home safe. Or if we wouldn't have come home safe. But in that case, we would now be worrying about something else, if we would still be alive." Bianca shrugged. "But that's not the case. We..." Victorina suddenly faced Bunny. "How did you see them?" Bianca stopped right in the middle of her sentence. 'What the frak does she mean?' she thought, remaining quiet. The lieutenant moved her head closer. "Don't mess around captain. How did you see those Xenos? I couldn't see them. The gunners didn't spot them. Our auspex didn't catch them..." Victorina was almost prodding Bunny in the chest with her index finger. "Nobody saw them. Not Vinnius, not Igor. No one on the other crews spotted them..." The lieutenant had been whispering at first, but now she had raised her voice. "So... how... the frak... did... you?" There was anger and resentment in her voice. Victorina's eyes even reflected something akin to hatred or contempt.

The outburst didn't leave Bianca with a lot of time to interpret the situation. She didn't understand why Vic was so angry. And she didn't get at all what she was hinting at. "Frak Vic. I just saw them. I saw a glitch. I got lucky. Perhaps their cameo tech didn't work properly. I don't know how Xeno machine spirits work. Do you?" Bianca's annoyance had turned into anger by now. "You can be frakking glad I did see them. You certainly didn't see them! Frakking rookie." Instead of backing down, she saw how Vic wanted to retort, which infuriated her even further. Luckily there was one thing she could do this time: pull rank. "Shut it, Klönner. You were frakking useless in that cockpit. It's time you think some things over. I expect a full report on the action. I want an analysis of your own combat behaviour. I want you to write down the things you should have done in there. And I want you to make a comparison between my combat manoeuvres and those described in the Tactica Imperialis. And then I want you to consider which strategy would have had the best outcome!" Bianca was practically screaming now. The ground crew had wisely chosen to inspect the other side of the Mastiff. And Victorina finally seemed to get the message. "Ma'am! Yes Ma'am!" Her salute was still sloppy and Bianca could see that the woman still hadn't let go of her anger. But pulling rank didn't leave her feeling especially satisfied either. Nor was she one of the officers that enjoyed a little, good spirited animosity within a combat unit. So she let it slide.

She stared out over the landing pad and the temp air field laying behind it. At the eastern horizon, the sky was turning red. The sun would be up soon. She felt tired. The rush of the combat mission was fleeting. She heard footsteps coming closer. "Dismissed her, did you?" Gomez stopped beside her. Bianca grunted something which could be understood as consent. "You know she did alright for a rookie, right?" Bianca frowned, but grunted her agreeance again. "I knew you did Bunny. What was going on then?" She shrugged and didn't answer. GZ put a hand around her shoulder. "Let's head to the mess of the 32th squadron. We might be able to score some breakfast. I hear their colonel likes to eat early in the morning. And that he always makes sure there's plenty of bacon to start the day." Despite the rotten mood Vic had brought her in, Bianca smiled. She could always count on Gomez to get her smiling. Not only was he witty, but he also had a laughter in his eyes that normally disappeared by the time you became a veteran soldier. But under GZ's thick black moustache, which went over in a closely shaven beard, sat a mouth which was molded into a smile, big yellowish teeth included.

"Alright. Let's do that." She freed herself of Gomez' arm and set out in the direction of the barracks of the 32th. They were only walking for five minutes enjoying the silence and the view of the sun coming up at the horizon, when Gomez suddenly bumped against Bunny's shoulder. She nearly crashed into some promethium barrels and was about to give Gomez some flak, when she saw how the navigator signalled her to stay put. Now she could hear the sound of an engine growing louder. "It's the major." Gomez whispered and he took a few steps away from her. Bianca stood back up. "So. It's not like I'll be able to dodge him indefinitely." Gomez didn't believe it wise to share his thoughts about how his captain's current state of mind might not be the best one to face a, no doubt, furious CO. If he would inform Bunny of his opinion, he would probably be on the receiving end of her foul mood. But apparently his expression had said as much. "And don't think you can protect me from him, sergeant. I've seen worse than a temper tantrum of a dimwitted CO." Gomez just nodded at her outburst. "Don't think I'll be seeing you in that mess hall then. Good luck!" Bianca grunted non-commitedly and with a hand wave she sent her navigator on his way.

She stayed put on the tarmac, waiting for the major to arrive. The jeep stopped. Without squealing tires or any other drama. It seemed that the major had calmed down already. Vinnius stood up from the passenger's seat, indicating the volunteer driver - no doubt the major had commandeered the vehicle the moment he had heard of Bunny's return - to wait. "I see that you made it, captain." Vinnius voice wasn't exactly dripping with sarcasm, but it certainly wasn't the warm welcome for a pilot that had just saved the hide of a fellow crew. "Good. Now please take a seat so we can get on our way." Vinnius pointed at the back seat, a metal bench at the back of the open topped vehicle. Once more, Bianca was at a loss for words and felt like she was missing some vital piece of information to understand her current situation. She had expected a furious, or at least angry officer. Not someone who was polite and didn't even mention her most recent show of insubordination. She studied the major's face. The sunglasses the man usually wore were tucked away in one of his breast pockets of his flight suit, which made sense as the sun was only just getting up. What was more weird, was that the major was still wearing his flight suit. While flying towards V-Rock, Bianca had made some calculations to determine how much time would have passed between the arrival of the major and her own. Unless the major had had some trouble of his own on the way home, he should easily have had the chance to switch out his flightsuit for a uniform after enjoying a nice shower.

"What in the warp is keeping you, Saliaminsky?!" Vinnius half asked, half shouted when he noticed how Bianca wasn't making any attempts at boarding the jeep. "Did you expected some congratulatory secco? The regiment band performing the Imperial March? Get the frak in the car. Command needs to see us." Now Bianca didn't hesitate for a second. Two things had become clear. One: the major actually was in a pretty foul mood after her little stunt. And two: it seemed like Command was planning on giving her something useful to do, probably overriding whatever sanction Vinnius had come up with. She sat down on the iron bench. "Apologies sir." She knew better than to explain what she had been thinking. She looked at the major as he sat back down in the passenger seat. He was cleanly shaven, leaving no beard or moustache, although the regiment barber had left his light brown hair untouched so it stood firmly upright, about an inch long. It was a typical jarhead cut. Efficient. His brown eyes under thin black brows, radiated the same efficiency. His mouth, with thin slightly reddish lips, was, like always, a thin line, not accustomed to smiling. The driver pulled up and made a U-turn, going linea recta for the general command post of V-Rock airfield. Bianca couldn't help but feel an all too familiar feeling in her gut. This smelled like a special op. The thing she lived for. A resolute smile appeared on her face. Somehow, this day had become even more interesting.


	4. Chapter 4: Memento Mori

Gomez saw the jeep racing off in the first red sunlight, until it disappeared behind a reinforced rockcrete hangar. The major hadn't spared him a single look as they had sped past. He had heard him shouting at Bunny. It was only to be expected, but he cursed the fact that he couldn't do anything about it. Vinnius was a stick-up-the-arse CO and Bunny deserved better than such an officer. If only she wouldn't show off her obvious superiority all the time. The navigator was sure that people like Vinnius wouldn't mind Bunny's attitude as much. With the sound of the jeep fading away, Gomez decided to find some breakfast before catching some shut eye. Delivering the paperwork he was carrying with him in the beige, standard issue Imperial Navy briefcase would have to wait till after that. He was pretty sure that the Munitorum wouldn't mind too much. He changed his course and headed for their own mess hall. Without the rank of Bunny his odds of scoring breakfast at the 32nd officer mess hall, were even worse than a fresh guardsman's odds to survive his first melee with an ork. Gomez checked his pockets and found his crumpled package of ciho-sticks. Although much harder to come by, the ciho-sticks were of a much better quality than the average lho-stick. He lit one up and savoured the spicy aroma as he sucked in the first whiff of smoke. He started to relax and began to realize the feat they had pulled off. Downing two Eldar fighters while protecting - and bringing home - a wounded bird? They might even be given a medal for such a thing. Nothing too fancy, but enough to impress rookies and guard regulars to get some free rounds of booze. So apart from Bunny's situation, Gomez felt that life was good. He decided to cherish the moment. He already knew you could count these moments on one hand when you were in the service.

He realized that he should have come to his conclusion earlier when he rounded a corner and bumped into lieutenant Klönner who had obviously been waiting for him. Her face didn't predict anything good and the taste of his ciho-stick went sour. "Sergeant," she began, "Let's walk together. I've got some things I want to discuss with you." Gomez wasn't in the mood to smooth things over on Bunny's behalf. Although he had defended the lieutenant with Bunny, he really didn't want to get involved any more than that. But he could hardly deny her. They were heading in the same direction and more importantly, she could easily order him to listen to her. "Sure." he replied, his tone reflecting his unwillingness. "What do you want to talk about?" It seemed Victorina hadn't really expected his attitude, her surprise clearly visible. "Well," she said, trying to find her words, "I think... We should discuss what happened during that fight, don't you think?" Gomez didn't think that necessary at all and tried to hint at it. "I've noted down everything Command and the Munitorum need to know right here," the navigator tapped on the briefcase he was carrying with him, "I'm not really sure what else needs discussing." Despite his hints, Victorina didn't seem inclined to pick up on them. "You didn't notice anything strange during that fight? You've seen her do that stuff regularly?" Some of Vic's anger was seeping through her questions, but Gomez noticed that she was also genuinely surprised at his refusal to discuss the combat.

Even though he would pick the side of his captain over that of the rookie lieutenant any day of the week, Gomez didn't want to get into a fight either. "Are you talking about her combat manoeuvres? Then no. No, I haven't seen her do that earlier. Going to VTOL in mid flight is hardly standard protocol. And neither is dumping your fuel reserves as a way to blast the enemy out of the sky. But I have seen her do other crap. She once did a loop-the-loop with that Mastiff. I'm pretty sure that isn't standard procedure either, but it got the job done. Just like her last two stunts have probably saved our..." Victorina grabbed the slightly bigger Gomez by the shoulder and stopped him in his tracks. "I'm not talking about that, sergeant." And before he could ask whatever the hell she actually was talking about, Vic started shouting at him. "Are you telling me you don't find it strange that she picked up on those raiders? Not just once, but consistently? Even the auspex couldn't handle that." Gomez frowned, not understanding what Victorina was getting at. "I'm not sure I know what you're going on about. Machine spirits do fail from time to time. Not that I think..."

Victorina interrupted him again. "No! You're not getting it!" She couldn't hide her impatience with the navigator and growled in frustration, clenching her fists. "I'm not talking about frakking machine spirits. Emperor knows those bastards are unreliable sons of bitches. No! I'm talking about the captain. She's the one who..." Now it was Gomez turn to interrupt the lieutenant, outranked or not. "I don't think it's wise to show disrespect for captain Saliaminsky, lieutenant. You're not going to win over any..." But the navigator had clearly underestimated Victorina's choler as she interrupted him on her turn. "You don't want to listen to this? Fine! I'll talk to someone else who will listen. Besides, I should have known better than to talk to the man who's practically drooling over her. Frak you, Gomez. Frak you. You'll come to regret this." And with those words, Victorina stomped away, leaving the confused navigator alone on the tarmac. 'What in the warp is up with that...' He nearly called her a name in his thoughts. But Gomez hadn't become a sergeant by writing anyone off just like that. He just knew that the lieutenant was upset about something that had happened during the flight. But also that she had kept her cool until they had set foot back on Vandahl's surface. So she did know where her priorities lay. He set course once more for the Chariots' mess hall, trying to savour the rest of his ciho-stick.

On his way to the mess, Gomez passed the hangars of the Hercules Wasps, their sister flight. These men and women flew the standard Valkyrie. They outnumbered the Chariots about two to one and also had two Vulture-pattern Valks among their ships. There was a friendly animosity between the two flights. The Wasps mocked the Chariots Mastiffs for their lack of speed and said the crews were a dull-witted bunch that would get lost if they flew at a 'normal' flight speed. The Chariots mocked the Wasps in turn, saying that their lack of autonomy was correlated with the size of their blatters and that it wouldn't have been the first time a Wasp had peed his pants because they didn't return to base quickly enough. But underneath the jests, all of them understood that each had their own specialty and that every one of them risked their lives every time they took off to drop or retrieve some peeps. Gomez was surprised to see that the Valks were gone. Only the Vultures still stood in the bunkerized hangars, but the other ten birds had flown out. Although he hadn't expected a mission for the Wasps, he wasn't alarmed either. It wouldn't be the first time that a flight or squadron had to scramble because a Guard unit had bitten off more than it could chew.

He entered the mess hall, planning on asking the Vulture crews where their comrades had gone. The banners of the two flights hung at the walls, one depicting an angry looking, yellow insect over a white gothic H on a field of blue. The other depicting a quadriga, charriot and driver raising a spear, over the same character and the same field of blue. Every aerial division hailing from Hercules had the same background for their banners. In between the banners hung a few dozen pics of old crews, some decorated, others forgotten by the Imperium but not by the squadron. Both the Chariots and the Wasps had a respectable combat track record, having been deployed in two crusades. They honoured the men and women who went before them regularly. At the back of the mess stood a wooden triptych. The men who were present had gathered around it, having opened the two doors to reveal the contents. The left panel showed the Emperor Guardian, his golden armoured hand over a blue and green planet. On the other was a stylized symbol of the Aeronautica Imperialis. In the middle hung hundreds of small steel plates: dogtags. Amongst the metal tokens, also hung quite a few wooden pieces. If you flew with the Wasps or the Chariots, you knew that there was a good chance that when you died, no one would be able to retrieve your body.

The men and women standing around the memorial for their lost comrades in arms, mostly hailed from the crews of the Chariots. They were hanging the names of those lost in the last action among the others. Gomez immediately joined the group, received a tumbler with half a finger of amasec and joined in the prayer the copilot of Vinnius, captain Gundögar, was leading. Half a minute later, they all raised the glass and saluted their lost brothers and sisters in arms. "You have served the Emperor valiantly. We will continue the fight for you and for Him. Rest in peace now." As one man they all knocked back their glasses. There were no overt displays of emotion. Just a simple rite. When you were in the Navy, you knew that casualties were unavoidable. Those who couldn't accept that, seldom remained with combat units. They all knew the risks the moment they stepped in their planes. Those who had had closer relationships with the deceased would mourn them privately. Gomez felt relieved that he hadn't had known anyone from the crashed birds too closely.

The men and women dispersed, sitting in small groups, ordering a new round of drinks. He remembered the question he had wanted to ask and joined the plasteel foldable table where a few Wasps were sitting. They gave him a solemn nod and made room for him. "You knew anyone?" the pilot asked. Gomez just shook his head. Neither of the men added anything to that. They both knew the feeling of sorrow mixed with relief and guilt. After a few moments of silence, Gomez changed the subject. "So, where is the rest of your flight? Didn't realize you were heading out." The pilot, a lieutenant called Turan, shrugged. "There weren't any missions scheduled, but somehow Command changed that in a blink of an eye." GZ grinned. "Yeah. They do that, don't they." But from Turan's expression, GZ got that it wasn't anything regular that was going on. When you were in the business of carrying grunts from and to the front lines, you knew that you were always on call, but this time something else was up. "You need me to buy you guys another drink? Spill it." Gomez tried a friendly approach, but the dour faces of the men around him remained unchanged. Turan's copilot, lieutenant Özman, a rather burly man, replied with a gruff voice. "Classified information, pal." But with an annoyed look Turan made him shut up. "What Özzy is trying to say is that he knows jack shit himself, Gomez. And he's rather pissed about it." Özman started to protest, but a sergeant from the ground crew put his hand on his arm and calmed him down with a smile and a joke. "So, what? They just took off? Were they carrying any troops?" Turan nodded. "But nothing I've ever seen running around here." GZ laughed. "What? Did they try to stuff some ogryns in your birds?" The joke didn't stick. "No man," Turan answered, "They were human alright, but they were carrying hellguns and wore carapace. Last I heard we didn't have any karskin on Vandahl. But perhaps that changed." The pilot shrugged. "All I know is that there are rumours that Command isn't happy at all with this mission and that someone forced their hand.

Gomez thought about what he'd heard. It didn't make sense at all to bring in a specialized unit like the karskin. They almost had the Eldar on the run. Unless someone expected more trouble. It wouldn't be the first time that a third party would complicate things. In fact, Gomez had seen wars where another Imperial faction had entered the frey to complicate things. Whether it was the Adepta Sororitas, the Adeptus Astartes or a Legio Titanicus. You could safely put your money on the fact that they would have different agendas. "Frak." he cursed softly, "That most likely means that this war isn't going to be won the next few days." Turan answered him rather cynically. "If it isn't this war we're fighting, they'll soon find another one for us." The pilot emptied his glass. "And I rather like this one. At least we're winning." Gomez hummed approvingly. He couldn't argue with that logic. It was faultless after all. He took his leave and started walking outside. He briefly checked whether he could spot Vic, but the lieutenant hadn't shown up. His back ached though - a direct result from Bunny's improvised manoeuvring - so he dismissed the thoughts about lieutenant Klönner and headed to his barracks. Another rule in the Navy was that when deployed, you benefited from every opportunity to sleep. And he sure was going to take that to heart.


	5. Chapter 5: Command

Bianca stepped out of the jeep and followed the major into the bunker of general command. They needed to show their ID at the entrance to a veteran Guard sergeant. The man didn't muck about and checked them thoroughly. Bianca was convinced that he would have taken tissue samples to check their biometrics if he had had the equipment. Fortunately, the man needed to make do with the pic on their military passes and after half a minute, he waved them through, giving them both a crisp salute. Inside, the narrow rockcrete walls were lit by field lumen strips and left and right, Bianca saw outdated and discarded battle maps and obsolete reports, mostly stashed in brown cardboard boxes. The Imperial offensive was pretty succesful, so the combat situation changed regularly. The Emperor knew Bianca had seen other conflicts, where the Imperials and the enemy had held their respective positions for weeks or even months on end. She much preferred this mobile warfare, even though it meant they needed to switch bases every now and again. She was sure that engineering disagreed with her - seeing how they would be responsible for building the next set of bunkers - but who cared about what the mud men said.

After a few twists and turns they arrived at the group leader's desk. The colonel, an old fighter pilot with a thick ginger moustache, sat inside and was reading through a report. The man had a bad hip but refused an augmentic. Bianca had never understood why. As a result he had a funny wobble in his walk and his broad shoulders were a bit twisted. Vinnius knocked on the plasteel door of the tiny office. "Colonel Hartz. Major Vinnius and captain Saliaminsky reporting." The colonel looked up from his report and waved them in, his face quite unreadable. Both Vinnius and Bianca came in and stood at attention. Bianca wondered whether Hartz would berate or praise her. She didn't have much dealings with him, only rarely seeing him at briefings that concerned the entire group. But the reason why they were there had to be bigger than a simple blame. Otherwise they would have beend dealing with Major Chukran, the squadron commander. Not to mention the fleet commissariat.

"At ease." Hartz said. "Can't offer you a chair." The officer pointed at a man that had remained unnoticed thus far. "But I can offer you a drink. I heard you lost three crews." From one of the drawers of his desk he retrieved a bottle of dryké and three glasses. The colonel respected the same rites he had no doubt gone through numerous times since he joined the Imperial Navy and the Aeronautica Imperialis. The three officers knocked back the glasses as soon as Hartz had said the traditional words. The man sitting on the only chair, pushed against the wall so he remained out of sight from the passage in the hallway, remained quiet. Bianca observed him and came quickly to the conclusion that the man was no guardsman, nor was he a member of the Imperial Navy. He wore a carapace chest plate under a flak coat. At his side hung an impressive bolt pistol with a laquered ivory grip, but the flak coat couldn't hide the fact that the scrawny man would hardly be able to keep the pistol level if he would raise it. From under the man's collar, an electoo came peeping out. But the man also carried a hefty tome with a title in high gothic. And from the looks of it, he seemed to be able to read it. At least, he kept his finger tucked between the pages not to lose track.

"Now, let us come to business." the colonel said, retrieving the glasses and putting them back in the drawer unwashed. Hartz wasn't an officer that had inherited his command. Bianca praised herself lucky that the group commander had fought many a war and had climbed up to the position field promotion to field promotion. "We've been asked..." Bianca noticed both the inflection on the word 'asked' and how Hartz gave the unidentified man a meaningful look at the same time, "to assist a special operation. I have deployed the Wasps to do so. Unfortunately, the operation..." The scrawny man interrupted the colonel. "Unfortunately, additional means need to be diverted to this mission. Your flight will leave as soon as your planes have been refueled and reloaded." Bianca tried to hide her shocked feelings. 'Who does he think he is? Interrupting the colonel, requisitioning our planes and crews.' She quickly glanced at Vinnius, but the major seemed up to the task of hiding his emotions. The colonel however, did not. His face had turned red, but instead of giving way to his outrage, the officer was sucking it up. When he spoke again, his voice was flat, but both Vinnius as Bianca could hear the strain to remain calm in his words. "This is a fetch and retrieve mission. You will find coordinates and vox frequencies in the briefing notes. Learn them by heart and destroy them before leaving here." The colonel handed them two identical folders. When Bianca opened hers, she found two vellums. 'Hardly what you can call an extensive briefing.'

She glanced at Vinnius again. Bianca had a ton of questions. Both operational, like if they should expect resistance on the ground, as other questions that she had no business asking, like who the frak the man was that sat against the wall. Coincidentally Vinnius had been doing the same and Bianca saw that he also felt the same. Whatever their differences on the last mission, this was something else. Vinnius gave her a near inperceivable nod, giving her permission to ask some questions. Bianca half suspected that he thought it looked better when she was asking the, perhaps stupid, questions and half suspected that he was still trying to make sense of it all and didn't know what questions to ask. Bianca took a second to order her thoughts. Quite a few things had popped up in her mind: what had happened to the Wasps? Why couldn't they fulfill the mission? The most logical answer was that they were shot down, but if that was the case, why did they think they stood a better chance of surviving? Did they have a complete picture of what resistance to expect at the landing zone? How many men would they need to pick up? If all the Valks of the Wasps had been deployed, how did they think that the four remaining Mastiffs, one of which quite badly damaged, would be able to pick all those men up?

She began with a different question though. "Colonel, with all due respect, but why am I here?" It was a bit strange that the colonel wasn't just giving the briefing to Vinnius. He would be in charge of informing the rest of the crews of the flight. Hartz didn't seem all that surprised by Bianca's question. "It's real easy captain. You're the only two pilots with operational birds. Lieutenant Renner and his crew came home with the major, but their Mastiff showed technical problems during the landing. Like Igor's bird, it's not operational at this time." Bianca wondered what Renner, the fourth remaining pilot from Vinnius' flight, had done to his plane, but put that question away for later. "Still, colonel, and I'm sorry if I am pushing the point, surely the major could be giving me the briefing." The colonel didn't seem bothered by Bianca's question, but it was the scrawny man who answered. "This mission is too important to lose details in transferring the mission statements. And with the results from your sister flight, I believe it better that every pilot involved in this operation knows what to do. Chances are that one of you will be shot down before you even make it to the landing zone."

Bianca was momentarily stunned by the rather brutish answer of the man. Vinnius seemed uneasy as well with the man's direct approach. Both pilots had already deduced from the missing Wasps that this mission would be hairy, but to put it that bluntly was something else. Apparently, Vinnius was even more bothered by this than she. "If I can talk freely sir," Vinnius adressed Hartz, "but who the frak is this guy?!" The colonel's face betrayed that he was equally irritated by the man, but once more the man himself cut in. "That's hardly important at this time, major. Do you have any other questions that concern the mission itself?" Bianca understood that whoever the man was, he was boss. If he didn't want to share his identity, then they wouldn't find out. So instead, she asked the questions that had been bothering her. The answers that the man gave her bothered her even more. He expected only a fraction of the unidentified ground troops to have survived and they weren't really important anyway. But there was one VIP that they should bring back. Dead or alive. They found a picture of the man in their briefing notes. Of course they would have to destroy that too when they left the command bunker. If the detail had been succesful, there would also be a special box - the man described it like a sturdy jewelry box - that they should bring with them at all costs. Bianca's questions about the contents of the box remained unanswered. It wasn't her concern according to the civilian. In the end, Bianca didn't really understood why briefing her in person had been necessary. She hardly knew anything more than when she had stepped in Vinnius' jeep. The colonel dismissed them. Vinnius tried to stay behind, but the civilian remained in Hartz' office and made it quite clear that Vinnius should get ready for take off. They got another five minutes to memorize what was in the briefing notes and then the civilian burned them.

Both Charriot officers felt ill at ease as they left the command bunker. Whatever it was that was happening, it was far outside of standard Navy protocol. 'Even for a special mission, this is far out.' Bianca thought. She thought she could see Vinnius thinking the same. At least it was strange enough that he even forgot to lecture her about her previous behaviour. When they were driving back to their own barracks, not really looking forward to scramble their crews, Vinnius looked back to Bianca who had resumed her seat on the back bench. "We'll need to look out for one another out there. This thing smells." Part of Bianca was actually looking forward to the mission. These were the things she lived for. Not ferrying VIP's or peeps from command post to command post over friendly territory. But on the other hand there would only be one other crew to watch her back and the fact that the Wasps probably had been decimated were two good reasons not to lose herself in her lust for battle. She soon found a third reason not to look forward to the mission.

As the jeep stopped in the morning light - the sun was well up and shone over the prairies of Vandahl - she saw lieutenant Klönner leaving the small barracks of the fleet commissariat. Immediately she felt her ire raising. 'What the frak is she thinking?' Bianca thought, but she also tried to calm herself. Getting into a fight with Klönner right now was about the last thing she needed. She waved at the lieutenant with Vinnius beside her. When the slightly smaller women arrived, she immediately sent her back on her way. "We're scrambling. Gather the crew. Start with Miroslav's bunch before they are wasted on dryké. I'll find GZ. We're leaving in fifteen." From the look on her face, blabbing to Marcks hadn't helped a lot. With a scowl Victorina saluted her and started running. Of course Vinnius had picked up on the little spat. "Anything you need to tell me, Saliaminsky? Vic didn't seem all that happy." Bianca didn't feel like showing her dirty laundry to Vinnius. After all, every pilot was responsible for his own crew. "Just a rookie that needs to learn to know the ropes, sir." Vinnius raised an eyebrow but left it at that. He respected Bianca too much to start nosing in her affairs like that. "Fine. See you in fifteen on the pad." "Aye sir." Bianca answered, giving her commander a salute.

She found Gomez where she expected him to be: catching some sleep. She went back to her Mastiff leaving him to get dressed properly. The fitters and riggers were done and a lonely engineseer stood beside the plane, putting some electrotools in a toolbox. She gave him the sign of the Aquila, while he responded in turn with the sign of the Cog. "Everything in order?" Bianca asked. The red robed man answered with a simple 'yes captain' and seemed to make himself ready to leave. "Hold up," Bianca said, "What the frak was up with the machine spirits?" The engineseer looked at her for a second, his left eye, an augmentic, zooming in on her face. "Nothing. Both the mother as her children are all fine." Bianca never understood how all the machine spirits of the Mastiff were related and she hardly pictured them as a happy little family, but she had decided long ago not to ask about it. At least not a member of the Adeptus Mechanicus. "What do you mean 'nothing'? The auspex hardly did anything out there and we had a complete instrument failure during our return flight. The engineseer seemed to shrug, or at least made some sort of attempt at the human gesture. "Diagnostic protocols have shown nothing of the sort. The auspex is performing optimally." Bianca noticed how the man hesitated for a second. "It could just be that the Xeno technology is too strange for them to pick up." he added belatedly. For a second she thought he would add an apology, but then he didn't and Bianca realized again that she was talking to an adept of the Mechanicus. 'Not really a bunch renowned for their manners.' she tought. She considered giving him some flak - she had seen what she had seen - but concluded that it wouldn't help her. "Fine." she concluded and left the man on the landing pad to inspect the Mastiff.

She sat in her chair and started the preflight checks, soothing the machine spirits of the plane thoroughly. She hardly trusted the engineseer seeing as he had come up with nothing to explain the malfunction. She heard someone climbing up the little ladder of one of the back doors. "That's quick!" she shouted without looking, expecting Gomez to enter the cockpit. The lack of response made her look up, straight into the greenish eyes of Marcks. Bianca got up to salute him. She knew better than to vex the commissar. A salute was in place, even though she enjoyed a relatively good relationship with the man. The man waved her down and took a seat in the co-pilot's chair. He wore a worried expression, especially when he took off his impressive red cap and threw it on the dashboard, scratching his head through his thin silver hair. Bianca had heard stories about the commissar; how he had singlehandedly taken command of a battle cruiser, of course after executing the entire senior staff, or of his imaculate track record where it came to loyalty among the squadrons he had served with. She heard the fleet commissariat had offered him a pension, but he had refused, preferring to continue serving the Imperial Navy. Some said that his current station - a posting with a transport squadron - had been another way to grant him some easier times. Others claimed that it was a way to sidetrack the man and avoid having a hard-headed, principled man in the senior staff of the fleet commissariat. In all her time in the squadron, she had never seen the man shrink away from his duty and now, both the Wasps and the Charriots could be added to his perfect service record. To see this man worried, didn't promise anything good, Bianca realized.

"Commissar Marcks. How can I be of service?" Bianca asked, a bit formal. Marcks didn't look at her immediately, but stared out of the thin armourcrys windows of the cockpit, slightly pinching his eyes against the harsh light of the sun. He kept silent, apparently still thinking over what he wanted to say to her. Bianca didn't break the silence and so it went on, until it became painful. Bianca scraped her throat. 'Better to face this head on as well.' she thought. "Might your visit have anything to do with lieutenant Klönner?" Marcks remained stoicly quiet but nodded softly. Bianca was getting really worried. 'What in the warp did that rookie tell him?' She wanted to turn back to her instrument board and continue her checks, ignoring Marcks and hoping that the problem would go away on itself. But that was of course out of the question. She shot a quick look through the windscreen, hoping to see a crew member approaching. That might end this conversation - if you could call it that - as well. But the tarmac in front of the Mastiff was virginally empty. She looked back at Marcks, examining his posture and expression. The man seemed to be brooding on something. He didn't look angry. There was only deep concern. His sidearm was holstered, with the steel button of the leather flap closed. 'At least he's not planning on executing you right here and now.' He didn't look at her, but he didn't need to do that to make her feel she was the center of his attention. Bianca felt trapped and wanted to escape.

"Sir. If you would like to have this conversation at another time, I'll be happy to make time." Immediately he looked at her, the wrinkles around his pinched eyes indicating that he didn't like her offer at all. "No. This needs to be adressed now." he said with his raw bariton voice. It was a public secret that the man was a lho chimney and his voice betrayed the fact every time he opened his mouth to speak. "I did have a conversation with lieutenant Klönner. And it was a troubling one. Do you know what she told me?" Bianca had asked herself the question a few times now. Even though she was a rookie, she didn't think the lieutenant would talk to Marcks about some non-standard manoeuvring. Especially not when it had saved their skins. So it must have been something else. But she wasn't in the mood to continue guessing. "No. Not a clue, commissar." She now noticed how he was putting her under scrutiny. Instead of revealing what Vic had told him, he just kept his mouth shut, waiting for her to speak up. Bianca wished she could read his thoughts.

Finally, Marcks opened his mouth. "Are you alright captain?" She hadn't expected that question and looked away. She saw the commissar's cap laying on the instrument panel. "Yes sir. Of course sir." But her voice betrayed her uncertainty. Bianca realized it when Marcks frowned. She decided to defend herself. "I'm quite alright sir. I don't know what the lieutenant has told you, but she's a frakking rookie. Hardly seen any combat. Whatever she told you, it must be some mistake. It wouldn't be the first one she made here." Biance sounded angry. And she was. Her anger fueled her answers. 'The best defense is a good offense.' captain Tibbits had told her and it was another adagio she took to heart. Marcks reached for his cap. "Ridiculing or belittling lieutenant Klönner will gain you nothing Saliaminsky. I know she is a rookie, but her testimony was pure." Bianca wanted to protest, but with a curt, cutting motion he nipped her objections in the bud. He pressed his cap firmly on his squarish head. "But the fact that I am here to talk about it, should have been enough for you to understand that I'm not simply acting on her words." He stood up from the co-pilot's chair. "I've got what I came for, captain." His voice didn't betray whether he was on her side or not. Bianca stood as well and Marcks raised his left eyebrow ever so slightly. "Sir. With all due respect. But why is she..." she looked for a better, more neutral word, but couldn't find one, "What the frak is she telling about me?" Marcks pulled at the lapels of his uniform jacket, straightening it back into its crisp condition. He opened his mouth to answer, when suddenly from the back of the Mastiff, Gomez called out to Bianca. Marcks gave her a last meaningful look and turned on the heels of his black polished boots. GZ passed him on his way to the cockpit with a surprised salute. When the commissar had left the plane, Gomez pulled on Bianca's shoulder who had sat down again in her seat. "What was he doing here?" Bianca just shook her head. "Nothing. Just wishing us good luck. We're gonna need it."


	6. Chapter 6: Drop zone

+++5.456.988.M41+++  
+++Vandahl-2, Subsector Orcus, Sector Carceris, Segmentus Obscurus+++  
+++Enemy controlled airspace - Imperial Guard Valkyrie M/502+++

The cockpit had been quiet for quite some time now. Actually, after having said their goodbyes to the base tower, silence had reigned the entire flight, except for an occassional instruction from Gomez to alter their course. Bianca didn't look at Vic, expecting her to take full responsability for her tasks. She was still contemplating what could have gotten into the lieutenant to speak to Marcks and what on earth she had reported. Even is she wanted to confront Victorina about it, she couldn't. Gomez was in his usual spot, peering at the auspex, sitting only five feet behind the two pilots. The more she thought about it, the more she just wanted to punch Victorina in the face and be done with it. The endless pondering was driving her mad. She was even startled when Gomez called out to her.

"This was the last known position of the Wasps. Their lastvox contact with the tower was seven hours ago from this position. Assuming they reported it in correctly." Nothing in Gomez' tone indicated that he was making fun of the Wasps for their notorious dependancy of the tower for navigation. Things were far too serious for that at this point. In a combat situation it was a real possibility that you lost track of your position. Nobody mocked a crew that hadn't come home. Bianca shook her head to rid herself of her thoughts on Vic's accusations. "Right," she said over the on board channel. "Let's keep our eyes open for the Wasps. You never know we might find them." Everybody aboard the Mastiff knew what she was thinking. If they found them, chances were they would be picking up corpses. Still, she got determined answers from Miroslav's gun crew. Nobody was going to throw away an opportunity to aid a comrade in arms, even if it was against all odds. Bianca noticed that even Vic was straining her neck to look at the ground for traces of crashes. Visibility was excellent. The sun cast her bright yellow light over the wide prairie. Bianca didn't like that at all, seeing as they would very easily be spotted by the xenos. They stayed low to the ground to minimize the chance of detection, but even a half blind PDF trooper wouldn't have trouble spotting them.

Silence returned to the cockpit and they flew on. Fifteen minutes to their destination remained. Bianca counted the minutes. She expected to be attacked any time now. But neither she, nor her crew, nor the auspex picked up on any bandits. She grew more nervous as they approached the landing zone. She almost wished that the enemy would show itself. She would pick a fight over this waiting any day of the week. "There!" Victorina yelled, and for a second Bianca thought that they had made contact, but then she followed the lieutenant's pointing finger to the husk of one of the Wasps' Valks. "Well done!" Bianca replied immediately, momentarily forgetting the awkwardness between them. She opened a channel to Vinnius. "Commander. We've spotted one of the Wasps. Three o'clock of your position. Request permission to investigate." The answer came almost immediately. "Negative captain. Our mission orders are clear." Bianca was still contemplating her response - she knew Vinnius was right this time, although she really wanted to go look for their comrades - when the commander added: "Note down the position. We'll see if we can stop on our way back." Bianca sent a simple 'roger' and remained on course. She could feel how her crew was disappointed, but this time, she just followed suit. "Note it down GZ. The rest of you. Keep your eyes open. Maybe we can find even more of them."

The minutes passed. Five minutes out Bianca heard how Vinnius started hailing their VIP on the designated frequency. He repeated his call every minute, but they all went unanswered. The landing zone now came in sight. It was pretty hard to miss. A black rock formation rose up from the flat prairy, making it the only defendable position in a ten mile radius. It was also an excellent observation point. What Bianca didn't understand was why they were here in the first place. This was well beyond enemy lines, but she couldn't see any strategic interest in the vicinity. 'Why did the Wasps had to drop those troops here?' she thought. Gomez had told her about the unfamiliar troops that had been shipped of by the Wasps. "He should try another frequency." Gomez remarked. "Perhaps they are all dead anyway." Vic replied. Bianca stayed out of it and let Vinnius make the calls this time. "Let's keep our eyes open for threats. If they're dead, I don't want to join them." They both shut up. Then Miroslav spoke up. "I've got three crash sites to the south, captain. Looks like two of ours and one of them." 'So the fight intensified here.' Bianca thought, 'with air support. Good.' She didn't expect the Eldar air force to be still on site. Then Victorina spoke up. "There, between the rocks. Is that?" Bianca peered in the distance. "It is." Immediately she switched to Vinnius' channel. "Commander, xeno anti air platform spotted at eleven o'clock." Vinnius didn't hesitate for a second. "Evasive manoeuvres." The lead Mastiff dove to the left. Bianca mirrorred the move. The xeno gun crew would have to chose which bird to track. "There are probably more of them. Don't bother with the flares," Bianca told Victorina calm and businesslike. "It's a Reaper platform. Got a scatter laser, much like our multilaser cannons." Bianca quickly glanced to her right to check on her copilot. But it looked like she had her emotions well under control.

Contrary to their expectations, the anti air weaponsplatform didn't open fire. "They can't have missed us." Bianca said. "They must have seen us. Lieutenant. Take a better look. Use the magnoculars." Bianca held the Mastiff steady so Victorina could focus the orange crosshairs of the magnoculars on the xeno weapon. At the same time Miroslav shouted out from his station. "There's another one near the top of the rocks. About a dozen metres down from." Immediately Bianca made the Mastiff swirl to the left. "You saw something?" She asked Vic and the lieutenant nodded. "I think it was damaged. One barrel was broken off and another two were bent quite badly." Bianca cursed through her clenched teeth. "What the frak?" She was disturbed again by one of her gunners. "There's light at the foot of the rocks. A flare. No two!" Bianca needed to make a 180 to take a look for herself, but before she could, Vinnius' voice came through the vox confirming the sighting. "They are signalling. Imperials. I'm setting the bird down. Saliaminsky, cover me." Bianca rogered and told Victorina to take off the safety of their weapons. A comforting little beep indicated that the weapons were primed and ready. "We're going to hover over them." Bianca announced and Victorina flicked the necessary switches to go to VTOL. "At least you're not wrecking the machine spirit this time." Gomez commented, rather unhelpfully. "Yeah." Bianca confirmed, her bemusement clear. Ten seconds later they were hovering over the prairie, perhaps fifty metres above the surface, watching Vinnius land about two hundred metres further.

"Those are Imperials alright." Bianca commented and she saw how Victorina was nodding. There were two men waving with blue flares, giving the military signal to set down. Bianca took the magnoculars and studied them up close. She saw black carapace armour and hellguns. Not a single mark or insignia that would identify them. Under their helmets, they wore blackened metal visors. Probably photo, possibly predator sight. "But they ain't no guardsmen." She saw how Vinnius made his descent. He lost altitude quickly and only at the last possible moment he increased the power to ensure a soft landing. 'Showoff.' Bianca thought, but she had to admit that it was a more than decent landing. The Mastiff wasn't even on the ground yet when the two armed men doused the flairs by pushing the tips in the ground. "They don't seem to think the LZ is completely safe. Let's keep our eyes open for threats!" Bianca trusted her crew to keep an eye on their surroundings. She preferred following the scene on the deck. From behind a big rock came another two men, wearing the same black armour and equipment, carrying a stretcher between them. On it lay a man, clutching his belly with both hands. She grabbed the magnoculars and focused on the wounded man. It turned out she was a woman, her hair shaven closely to the skull. She wore the same armour, but hers was stained with blood and from the looks of it, it was her own. Bianca recognized the wound. The armour was torn open and although someone had rather messily put a bandage over the wound, the magnoculars showed that there were still frays of flesh sticking out from under it left and right. 'Sword wound. Most likely powered.' Bianca thought. The wound of an Eldar weapon made sense. And she had seen enough of those these last few weeks to know that the woman's chances weren't very good. A big part of the job of the Aeronautica Imperialis was ferrying back wounded from the front lines, although that mostly happened when a complete unit was pulling back. They weren't in te business of saving individual guardsmen. Bianca hated that at first, but soon she had understood that with their logistics it was completely impossible to be flying missions for individual guardsmen.

Vinnius' rear gunners opened the hatch and lowered the ramp. The two men with the stretcher disappeared inside. One of them came back out half a minute later. Bianca frowned. Why had he come back? And why weren't the other troopers mounting the Mastiff? There was more than enough room for them to stay aboard Vinnius' bird. Another half minute later, the vox crackled. "Saliaminksy? This is Vinnius. Set your bird down." Bianca shared a look of surprise with Gomez. Victorina brought their feeling under words perfectly. "What the frak. Why would he want that?" Bianca hummed her assent. "Commander. Could you repeat that order?" The mission became more and more irregular and Bianca got the feeling that it would take them to even stranger places. Vinnius repeated his order nonethess. "What do you think GZ?" Bianca asked, slowly starting her descent. The navigator shrugged. "I don't know. Can't think of any good tactical reason to do this. We should be covering them. If there are more men to be picked up, we should be switching places, not set down both at once." Bianca saw from the corner of her eye that Victorina was nodding approvingly. "Monitor the descent." Bianca ordered Victorina, "Take it slow." Bianca held the magnoculars back before her eyes and studied the situation below. They had perhaps thirty seconds before they would set down. "Commander. This is captain Saliaminsky... We've got a code blue. How is everything on your end?" A code blue was Navy talk for all systems operational within standard parametres. She hoped her question would give Vinnius the chance of being a bit more details. But once again, Vinnius disappointed her. "Here too captain. Here too. See you in a bit."


	7. Chapter 7: Split

Bianca still didn't understand the situation, but it seemed Vinnius was alright. "Copy that." she replied as she put down the magnoculars and grabbed the stick again. "I'll take over from here." she told Victorina. "Keep your weapons at the ready boys." she said to the gun crew over the vox. "We're still not sure what exactly is going on, but we're going to find out." Immediately the lance-corporal acknowledged her command, without his usual enthusiastic smart mouthing. She kept quite some distance between herself and Vinnius' bird and she turned the Mastiff a quarter clockwise so the back of her bird was facing the commander's aircraft. Which meant that there were two heavy bolters covering the space between them. As soon as she had set down, Vinnius came running towards her through the violently swinging, rugged prairie grass. She strapped out of her chair and ran to the back of the Mastiff. Over the din of the engines - Bianca wasn't shutting those down to assure a quick getaway - Vinnius started shouting. "It seems our mission is changing. Those guys," he pointed at the black armoured troopers, "are telling me to take one of their wounded back to base. He wants the other one to stay here." Bianca shook her head. "We've got our mission statement. We're supposed to extract them. We shouldn't be staying here. The xenos can pick up on us any time." Vinnius arrived at the ramp and could continue the conversation on a more normal tone. "I know." he said, and Bianca could hear that he didn't like the way things were evolving either. "But they are quite... convincing." Bianca gave him a questioning look and mimicked holding a pistol. "No." Vinnius said, shaking his head. "It's nothing like that... They are Inquisition."

Bianca sucked in her breath. For her, the Inquisition was something of a myth. When people talked about it, mostly when they had a bit too much to drink, the most outrageous stories were told. As far as Bianca knew it was a ruthless and untouchable bunch. They were supposed to have absolute authority and could execute anyone without accountability - which wasn't very special, Bianca had always thought, as the fleet commissariat had neigh the same possibility - but some went as far to say that they were also capable of destroying entire worlds. So although Bianca never had had any direct dealings with them and believed that quite a bit of the stories were exaggerations and a hotchpotch of drunk fabrications, she immediately was on edge. She wanted to ask Vinnius how he was sure, but then she realized that the presence of the Inquisition would explain quite a few things: the presence of the stranger at Hartz' office; the requisitioning of the Wasps and then, when the Wasps had failed, the Charriots; the location of their landing zone. And now the strange demand of ferrying back a single wounded while ignoring the crash sites of the Wasps.

It took Bianca a few seconds to take it all in. Vinnius waited and stared at her, perhaps expecting her to comment on this new information. "So, what now?" Bianca asked. A shadow fell over Vinnius' face and Bianca knew she wouldn't like what he was going to say. "You're gonna fly home in my bird and..." Before Vinnius could finish his sentence, Bianca exploded. "Frak no!" Vinnius imperturbably continued. "I will stay here." The major was well aware of what he was asking, Bianca could tell, but she didn't care for his reasons. "You can go frak yourself!" Bianca yelled. She was outraged. "It's simple enough, Saliaminsky." Vinnius insisted, "and I don't really care for your language. This is an order." Bianca unconsciously took a step backwards and crossed her arms. She noticed how sergeant Gomez had come to stand by her shoulder. She was still thinking about another way to curse the major when the navigator spoke up. "It seems the captain is unwilling to cede her craft to you, major. Imperial Navy regulation dictates that a captain of a ship is allowed to refuse such orders. Unless he or she is deemed unfit for command." Bianca looked over her shoulder at Gomez rather incredulously. Because he was using Naval regulations to make a point, and, perhaps even more surprising, because the sergeant was picking a fight with the major. She only looked at him for half a second, in which GZ gave her a subtle nod, telling her that he would stick to his guns. When she turned back towards Vinnius she was already thinking over what his reaction might be. Declaring someone unfit for command was pretty huge. It would mean that she would be suspended and out of service for quite some time; weeks, perhaps months. And the major would need to have good arguments to do so. Bianca felt really lucky that she was somehow in her right to deny him, because otherwise she would really be in trouble. Refusing an order in a non-combat situation, would at the very least earn her another talk with commissar Marcks. You could try to talk you way out of it when it occured in a combat situation. You could call in certain circumstances. Perhaps a different perspective on the tactical situation. But here and now, there was nothing to support her. Except for Naval regulations.

Vinnius sighed. "You don't understand captain." The major seemed to ignore sergeant Gomez completely. "I'm not doing this for no reason. But apparently their interrogator is requisitioning the entire crew to move on." When he saw how Bianca only seemed more happy with that perspective, he clarified. "On foot." Bianca took a step closer to the major. "Doesn't matter to me..." she said, and added the necessary 'commander' rather belatedly. She didn't know how to read Vinnius' next expression: first she could see anger, but it quickly faded into something else, perhaps regret. Finally his resolve resurfaced and his answer was a testimony of that feeling. "Fine." he said snappily. "Good luck captain." His sarcasm wasn't lost on the rest of Bianca's crew, who, apart from Victorina, had been able to pick up patches of the conversation and had been listening in. Vinnius turned on his heels and started sprinting back to his Mastiff, leaving Bianca to fend for herself. An opportunity she took with both hands. She started barking her orders immediately. Gomez needed to inform the lieutenant and shut down the engines and all equipment. Miroslav and the gunners would find the cameo nets and start with covering the bird up. Her crew responded instantly and before she left the aircraft she yelled at them encouragingly. "It seems the Emperor had a surprise in store for us. I take it we will not disappoint Him?" The five men yelled back at her, "Ma'am! No Ma'am!" and their grins mirrored the one on their captain's face. Bianca smiled contently. Whatever the interrogator had in store for them, she could count on them. "Alright, I'll go see our new friends to find out where we're going. Dismissed!"

Bianca jumped from the hatch and landed in the hip high grass, taking a moment to study her surroundings. She saw how Vinnius scaled the ramp of his own plane and how two black carapaced troopers started running back towards the rock formation. The second one held the, now neatly folded up, stretcher. Bianca decided to follow them and started running. Although she only wore her flight suit and her laspistol, she still couldn't catch up with the two men who wore a significantly heavier outfit. As the engine sound of the major's Mastiff inreased in pitch, the two men disappeared behind the black rocks. Bianca could still easily follow their traces through the grass. Half a minute later Gomez saw her disappear as well.

"Tell me again why we're staying here?" Victorina asked Gomez as the man turned away from the windscreen and refocused on shutting down his equipment. The lieutenant was flicking a dozen red switches overhead and had taken the news that they would stay behind rather badly. "I don't know, lieutenant," Gomez answered truthfully but annoyed, "but you would have stayed behind anyway. The major wanted to switch places with the captain. Not trade the entire crews." At least that was what Gomez had made from the exchange. And he didn't feel like giving Vic another reason to disagree with Bunny. "Frak. Just my luck." Victorina complained, pushing in two buttons simultaneously after which the engine noise started to decrease rapidly. Even though she wasn't very happy with the current developments, Gomez noticed that the lieutenant was still performing her duties as quickly as possible. For a rookie, she was well versed with handling the machine spirits. He said as much. Vic looked up and gave him a smile. "I've been training for this GZ. I might not be on top of my game when it comes to combat situations, but this," she nudged at the dashboard, "this, I know." Gomez gave her a cautious smile. "You'll get there, Vic. The Emperor protects." Victorina nodded and switched places, plopping down in Bianca's seat to continue the shut down procedure. Both officers worked on in silence while from the load bay noises came from lance-corporal Miroslav instructing his men to start unfolding the cameo nets. Victorina finished first and stood up, stepping behind Gomez' back and observing his work.

"You've been flying a long time with Bunny, haven't you?" Gomez nodded as he doused the lumen globe hanging over the little shelf in front of the auspex unit, where he could put his notebook and paper maps. The sergeant wasn't really sure where Vic was going with this. He had been acutely aware of the awkwardness between Bunny and Vic and he hadn't forgotten how she had talked about Bunny back at the base. He hoped that the lieutenant had gotten the message and wasn't about to start over. On the other hand, he didn't want to block her of now she had finally started talking again. One of the less attractive sides of Bunny was that she regularly tossed around the lessons she had gotten herself from her instructor Tibbits. And sometimes she even rubbed it under their noses. Therefore the adagio 'a divided crew, is a crew to be shot down' was engraved in his brain. So he awaited Vic's next question as he put his notes away in a tiny cupboard neatly hidden under the little desk. "So you know her pretty well, right?" Vic asked. "Yeah." GZ answered, "Not gonna say I know her like the back of my hand, but pretty damn good, yeah." Vic took a deep breath and as Gomez got up from his chair, he saw how she was gathering courage to ask her next question. "Spit it out, Vic." he encouraged her, although the veteran sergeant worried about what the frak it was she needed to ask. "Did you ever... Did you ever saw her acting strange?" Vic asked. "Ever seen her... Lose it?" Gomez decided to take that question on the base level. "No Vic. It's uncanny, but she never loses it in combat." The navigator realized he was sounding serious, strict even. And he didn't want Vic to take his answer the wrong way, so he added, with a little chuckle. "Outside of combat, that's when she sometimes loses it. There are a few drinking stories that go around." Gomez took pauze. He didn't want to paint Bunny as a drunk either. "Of course, we don't really know the truth of those, seeing as they all took place in the officer's mess." Vic nodded distracted, seemingly lost in thoughts. She had broken eye contact with Gomez. She mumbled something. Gomez almost didn't understand. "Perhaps it's coincedence after all." Gomez wanted to ask her what she meant, when suddenly, with a loud clap, a cameo net fell over the roof of the cockpit. Both Vic and Gomez were startled for a second. Then the lieutenant pushed pass Gomez. "Let's give them a hand, shall we." The moment to talk had passed and Gomez was left with his questions.


	8. Chapter 8: Wytch

_+++5.456.988.M41+++_  
_+++Vandahl-2, Subsector Orcus, Sector Carceris, Segmentus Obscurus+++_  
_+++Valley of the Bulge - Forbidden site X-12+++_

Behind the rocks, out of sight of the Mastiffs, Bianca had been able to track the traces of the black armoured troopers. It wasn't too hard to begin with. There was only one goat trail that ran up towards the top of the rock formation. She had to take care not to slip on the little black and grey pebbles littering the path. A few hundred metres further, the path grew narrow and she could rest her hands on both sides on the natural rock that towered above her. She realized that this was an excellent defensible position. There was no way to give assaulting infantry air support and the passage only allowed for one soldier to ascend at a time. After another hundred metres she noted that someone else had had the same idea. A thick line of blood was smeared on the rocks - some parts of it were still glistening - and further on, she saw more of it. She pulled her laspistol even though she thought the way clear. She had heard no sounds of combat from the two troopers who had preceded her. And she didn't see any bodies laying, so someone had taken the time to recover them. It all pointed to a fight that had taken place perhaps a few hours ago.

She followed the path around a hairpin bend and fired her gun even before she realized that the Eldar warrior laying against the rock wall was already dead. She cursed herself for her instinctive reaction and doubled her pace. Bianca wanted to catch up with the troopers as fast as she could. She was looking forward to this mission, but she had to admit that she was a bit out of her comfort zone without an aircraft to control. She passed another Eldar corpse and saw an empty smoke cannister laying on the ground. She was falling short of breath - the path was quite steep - and took a moment to look down. Although her view was mostly obstructed by the rock walls, she saw that she had climbed quite a bit. She couldn't see her Mastiff, but she did see the prairie below. She was at least 50 metres above the landing zone. She started running again, but after a minute or two her pace dropped again. The path had stopped. Instead the way up consisted of hip high boulders that one could still mount, although running up was no longer an option. She cursed under her breath but started climbing nonetheless. A little physical excercise wasn't going to hurt her.

After another two minutes she came at a clearing. Another Eldar corpse lay flat on his belly, still holding a weapon that most resembled a longlas. A couple of black armoured troopers looked up, but ignored her immediately thereafter. They stood around one of the Eldar Reaper platforms, busy checking their equipment and weapons. Beside the platform lay a number of bodybags. A quick count told her that the three Eldar had managed to kill at least thrice their number and she felt both new respect for her enemy as a renewed zeal to destroy them. One man sat a bit apart from the rest. He wore the same armour, but instead of a hellgun, the man carried a combibolter, a meltagun slung underneath the main barrel. He also wasn't carrying a backpack and at his belt hung a chainsword. There was also a small device, clearly something important if you considered the gold trim around the edges and the stylized Mechanicus skull, at his belt. Something the other troopers lacked. The man stood up and with a few energetic steps, closed the distance between him and Bianca. From his walk, Bianca could tell that this was a trained sword fighter. She hadn't come across many of those within the ranks of the Aeronautica Imperialis, but she had ferried enough troops of Guard regiments who prided themselves with their melee capabilities to recognize his balanced stance when he stopped before her. He made the sign of the Aquila instead of the standard Guard salute. "Interrogator Lance Primundo. And you are?"

Bianca already knew to expect the Inquisition and she didn't shrink back when the man casually introduced himself. Besides, the man's blue eyes and the little smile playing at the corner of his mouth were almost enough to let her be at ease. "Captain Bianca Saliaminksy, Aeronautica Imperialis." If the man had been expecting major Vinnius, he hid his surprise masterfully. "You're the pilot of that bird down there?" Primundo said, with a nudge of his chin to the right. Bianca turned her head and saw her Mastiff on the prairie, partially covered in cameo nets. From the clearing she enjoyed a wide view, an unobstructed horizon. The sun was still climbing higher into the sky and she could see how the heat was causing mirages on the plains. "Yeah, that's mine." she answered. "Good," Primundo said, " Vox your men that they come up here as well. Make sure they take as much weaponry as they can carry, although not so much that it will hinder their movement. We'll be slowed down enough by your presence." Bianca wanted to respond with a snide comment - after all, they were only here because the big shot had asked for it - when the man continued. "No offense, captain. I'm just presuming that your crew is specialised in flying, not ground operations." Bianca had to admit that she, and her crew, especially GZ, would be out of their depth. "None taken." she said, already looking for a vox caster. Without asking, one of the troopers stood up and gave her a black horn connected to the pack on his back. She wanted to give him a smile, but she saw that his entire face was covered with a mask, with a built in rebreather and special goggles. She started dialing the frequency when she stopped. "Shouldn't some of them stay to defend the aircraft? We're covering it up, but I doubt the Xeno will overlook it if they make a pass." Primundo nodded appreciating. "Good thinking, captain. But we've got something better than your nets." Bianca shrugged and opened a channel to the bird. After hailing it for a couple of times, Vic's voice came through. "Load up on weapons and bring the crew up. Follow my tracks. Keep following the path, you can't miss us." Half a minute later, Bianca could see how her crew assembled in front of the Mastiff. If she could see correctly - it was hard from this distance - she saw how one of them was sent back to the plane, carrying something far too heavy and bulky. 'Probably Miroslav trying to bring his heavy bolter.' she thought and she couldn't supress a smile. The man reminded her a bit about herself with his inexhaustible drive to bring the fight to the enemy.

She looked back at the interrogator and was surprised to see that a woman had joined him. She was perhaps thirty years old, long blond hair tied close to her scalp in an intricate braid pattern. Strangely enough she lacked the heavy carapace armour of her companions but she was clearly part of the band as she stood way too close to interrogator Primundo. She was whispering something in his ear and held her hand, with neatly manicured fingers, on his chest. Bianca raised an eyebrow, but almost uncannily, the woman directed her attention at her. There was a mixture of surprise and then anger in her expression. 'Shouldn't be so close with the boss then.' Bianca thought, 'Or put it out in the open like that.' She gave the woman an angry stare back and stepped towards Primundo. "Interrogator. You were talking about a way to hide our transport. Do you need any assistance?" The interrogator laughed softly. "I don't think so, captain. Acolyte Iris will take care of it." He patted the woman on the shoulder who, with a last annoyed look at Bianca stepped to the edge of the rock cliff.

With a dramatic gesture, Iris raised both her hands to the sky from underneath her mesh cloak and started mumbling some words. Bianca couldn't understand what it was, but during the short delivery, she noticed how she undid a bracelet from her wrist and held it with both hands. Bianca felt a little pressure at the back of her head and she thought she could hear a vague cry at the edge of her hearing. But the next moment the woman turned around, putting the bracelet back on and everything went back to normal. "So..." Bianca said a bit provocative, "That's it?" She looked back down. Her crew had disappeared from view, but the Mastiff was still there, plain to see for everyone. "That didn't work very well." she said mockingly. Iris gave her a look that told Bianca that the woman couldn't care less about her opinion. Primundo stepped in. "That's because you know that the transport is there. Anyone who doesn't know, or who has forgotten the exact location, will no longer see it. This trick is quite subtle. In some ways it reflects the Warp quite well. Its influence is quite insidious. He gave her another smile, but this time Bianca could feel that she was being tested. She looked from the interrogator to the acolyte and back to him. "If you say so." she said a bit snappish, before turning her back towards him and looking out over the prairie again.

It was then that Bianca realized that Iris was a wytch. Or better, a psyker, because there was no way an interrogator would work with an unsanctioned psyker. She didn't really know a lot about their kind. Only that they were bad news. And that they were meant to be taken away. As quickly as possible. She had had dealings with a wytch only once, back on Hercules. She had been young, a kid, maybe 7 years old. On Hercules, your age wasn't really important until you made the rites of passage. Before that, you were just a kid. She remembered how she and her friends had been playing near a pond. Hercules was a developping hive world. The Administratum classfied their cities as class two proto hives, meaning that there were about 50 million people in the city and that the first signs of multi-layering could be found. Bianca had lived with her parents and two sisters at the edge of the city and life had been relatively good. This meant that the three sisters could enjoy their time out of schola on the grassy plains surrounding the city. The light of the two suns of Hercules had provided them with a warm, pleasant day. They had decided to go swimming, together with some of their friends who also enjoyed the luxury of free time. Lots of kids of the schola needed to work in their families businesses. The water wasn't deep, perhaps two metres at the deepest point, and they had played a few rounds of tag and Marine & Xeno. Bianca of course had played as marine. At the end of the day, Kaze, a girl a bit older than her with fuzzy black hair and a heavy brow, who had played Xeno, had dove underwater to pull under Bianca's sister, Elenia. Like any good space marine would do, Elenia had fought back, pulling forcefully at Kaze's hair. When Kaze had thrown her elbow against Elenia's nose, the game had become a fight. A situation that presented itself regularly when the kids played this particular game.

This time though, it hadn't ended with a few curses and bruises. Elenia had pushed Kaze back under the water surface, trying to fend her off, when the black haired girl had burst out of the water and had yelled something incomprehensable. It wasn't just a kid's scream. Everybody in the water had felt that it had been something weird. As if the scream had had some kind of power. The fight had stopped and all the kids had been looking at Kaze and Elenia in the middle of the pond. Bianca could still distinctly remember how her sister had been covered in snot green duckweed and how a bit of rivergrass had been stuck in Kaze's hair. But it was the look in Kaze's eyes that still gave her the chills to this very day. Her eyes had been blood red, not just the white, but also her irisses and her pupils. Bianca had thought she'd been looking at Elenia, but she couldn't be sure. Bianca had started moving towards her sister, afraid of what Kaze might do next, but the next second the girl's eyes had cleared and she had stared at Elenia with her brown eyes, a shocked expression on her face. Someone had said hesitantly to leave the water and go home and some other kids had declared their accordance when suddenly, from the center of the pond, near Kaze, the water had started moving. Only five seconds later a whirlpool had formed, about half a foot wide, but it kept growing rapidly. Bianca had rushed towards her sister, but it was hard to move as the water quickly came to her chest. Kaze cried out and tried to get away from the vortex, but she only managed to do so very slowly. Elenia still hadn't been moving, apparently too shocked to react. Bianca had felt how the current was pulling at her. It had helped her closing the distance faster, but it had also made her lose her footing twice. Just as she had come to Elenia, Kaze had slipped as well and had gone under. She remembered how she had yelled at Elenia to head back to the bank. Bianca's voice had broken her out of her stupor, but instead of heeding Bianca's words, she had grabbed her sister's hand and had stepped closer to the whirlpool which had now grown to over a foot wide. Bianca had protested, but stubbornly, Elenia had stretched out her hand and miraculously she had caught hold of Kaze's arm.

With all their strength both Elenia and Bianca had held on. But that was all they had been able to do. As soon as they would have lifted a foot to move away from the vortex, she would be swept away. Bianca had known it. She remembered how she had thought that she would die. But also that she would rather die than let go of her sister. Luckily, neither of those outcomes had come true. The other girls and boys had seen her example and had acted on it. Soon, she had felt the hands of three other kids on her shoulder and arm, pulling her away from the current. Nevertheless, they had hardly made any progress. Then suddenly Kaze had gone under again. Elenia had yelled, but had maintained her grip, but the black hair of the girl had remained under water. They all saw the thrashing as the girl had tried frantically to swim, but it was of no use. Elenia had slaved away, trying to raise the arm which had still held on to Kaze, but she wasn't strong enough. After half a minute, the thrashing stopped. Bianca knew she had yelled to let go of the black haired girl, but Elenia had doggedly persevered. Until all of a sudden the current had weakened and the vortex had disappeared. With joined forces the kids had managed to pull Kaze's body out of the water.

On the muddy bank they had pushed on her chest and someone, Bianca could no longer remember who, had blown air in Kaze's open mouth. They had all cheered of relief when the girl had started coughing, puking out water, mud and duckweed. Afterwards they had brought her to father Vallon, the priest of the local Ecclesiarchy chapel. He had taken the girl in and had asked what had happened. His face had turned dour when they had told him about the vortex. He had thanked them for the rescue of Kaze and told them to get Kaze's parents. After that he had shut the door in front of them, keeping Kaze in the chapel. They had never seen the girl no more. Kaze's parents had moved out of the neighbourhood without saying where they were heading. Years later, someone had told Bianca that Vallon had recognized Kaze as a wytch. She had been deported and entrusted to the Black Ships when they had called port at Hercules. The parents had fled out of shame. And Bianca had realized that both Elenia and she had almost died saving the girl who had brought her fate upon herself.

The memory came back when she looked over her shoulder at Iris. And somewhere at the back of her head she realized the woman would mean trouble.


	9. Chapter 9: Assault

With the wytchery in place, Bianca turned back to Primundo, realizing he had asked her a question. Rather belatedly and a bit annoyed she answered him. "It seems like I can only take your word for it." The interrogator's smile broadened. "You don't like being dependant of other people, captain, do you?" Bianca decided to ignore that question and instead asked one of her own. 'To hell with this interrogator. Inquistion or not.' "What will be our next move?" The interrogator kept smiling, even if he was denied an answer. "We're going underground. Acolyte Iris has found the way. As soon as your people are here, we will be leaving." "Fine." Bianca said, "But what do you need us for?" Somewhere at the back of her head she feared that the interrogator would tell her, perhaps a bit more shrouded, that they were cannon fodder. "Well. We can hardly keep you lingering around, can we?" Primundo answered. "You don't trust us to wait for you by the plane?" Bianca asked undignified. "You really have your heart on your tongue, don't you captain?" The interrogator chuckled. "No. If you must know, your presence might disturb Iris' spell. We'll make sure you're taken care of though. Not to worry."

Bianca was still a bit vexed with the interrogator and walked away from him, looking out over the prairie. Iris approached the interrogator and took him apart. "You realize how she might endanger the mission?" she asked urgently. Primundo's smile had slipped from his face. "I do." he said, "but what is the alternative?" She shrugged. "Her co-pilot could fly the thing. And in a pinch Alfa-2 could do it as well." Primundo wasn't at all taken aback by the drastic solution Iris so casually proposed, but shook his head nonetheless. "Are you not aware of our casualties? We've lost more than three quarter of our men in that air raid, and then we've lost another ten in taking this position. We might have lost even more if you and I hadn't taken the lead. Not to mention Mitchell's sarcrifice. I don't think bringing the number of pilots down from three to two is the best way to continue. We're gonna need a ride out of here when we're done. We don't have the resources to take them all out. Even in their current condition, they are going to come after us. You can bet the house on that. Chances are the Eldar will be diminishing the number of pilots we have at our disposal. Let's not make it any easier for them." Iris sighed. If the Eldar would sense them coming, she wagered their chances of accomplishing the mission were even slimmer, but she knew when to stop resisting her boss. He could get very unpleasant if you didn't stop in time. "Fine," she said "Let's hope your intel is good. If we're facing anything more than a few remnant troops of storm guardians, we're gonna be screwed. Especially if you're wrong about the absence of their aspect warriors. You can kiss that fine ass of yours goodbye."

In the meanwhile, Victorina, Gomez, Miroslav and the other gunners had arrived at the clearing. Vic was sweating like a pig, not really used to physical exercise. Gomez too had to wipe his brow clear. Bianca could tell that the gunners were doing better, although Asser and Piret were quite pale. The man and the woman were still young and hadn't seen much action. At least not up close. Bianca guessed that they were a bit shocked by the signs of combat on the way up and the number of bodybags at the clearing. Miroslav and Rasvik were two veterans who had been with her for far longer and who had witnessed the outcomes of war numerous times. She approached the lot and told them to take five. She asked for a canteen and got one. She took a swig and passed it on to Piret. "Get some fluids into that body, sailor. You won't be of much use if you're dehydrated." Focusing her crew on small things they could actually control was her best bet of helping them keeping their nerves under control. Gomez saw what she was doing and gave her a knowing look. He sat down next to one of the black armoured troopers. The man didn't look up. Gomez poked the man and wanted to start a conversation. The man looked up and gave him a blank stare. "You guys Guard?" Gomez tried. At first, the man didn't respond, but then he shook his head. "Negative." With the question answered, he turned away. Gomez tapped him on the shoulder again. "So, where do you belong?" "Classified information." The man answered matter-of-factly. Gomez wondered for a second if the man was pulling his leg, but the guy wasn't being pesky about it. Once more, the soldier turned away. Gomez considered for a moment to ask another question, but he didn't want to insist until the man turned hostile. In some ways, the man made him think of a Mechanicus adept: socially inept, uninterested in small talk. But it wasn't really the same because a techpriest would have been pesky about the questions.

"What was that?" Bianca asked the interrogator, indicating Gomez and the soldier with a quick gesture of her chin. Primundo shrugged. "It's just their way. These men have been mindscrubbed and hypno-programmed to stay on target. Every waking second. Which leaves them... not ideally equipped as conversationalists." The man soflty laughed at his own joke, but continued on a more serious tone. "They are of course capable of speech, but they always try to answer as efficiently as possible. While respecting the secrecy of the mission. They used to be Tempestus Scions, but we've improved them. In our line of work, they are quite handy." Bianca didn't answer and considered how the man was talking about the soldiers as a tool, rather than as troops. Again, it made her wonder whether she and her crew were judged and put to use in the same way. Before she could voice her opinion, Primundo left her standing and walked to the heap of body bags. Next to it lay the weaponry of the casualties. The interrogator grabbed two hellguns and whistled between his teeth. Miroslav looked up and Primundo threw him the weapon. "You boys and girls better use this. It's the same idea as those laspistols you're carrying. Aim first, squeeze the trigger next." He continued by showing them the reload mechanism. "Keep them on full auto. You will sooner..." At that point Iris interrupted Primundo by scraping her throat. "We should be moving, interrogator." At once the little camp was bustling with activity. The scions got up and in formation. Iris started mumbling something and Primundo quickly threw the rest of her crew a hellgun each. Still Bianca finished Primundo's sentence in her mind. 'Keep them on full auto. You will sooner die than run out of ammunition."

Bianca and her crew remained at the back of the formation. Primundo had appointed two scions to watch over them, something that had obviously bothered lance-corporal Miroslav as he was still making attempts to join the vanguard. Not that he was very successful. The path between the rocks had started to descend again, although it wasn't leading back towards the prairie. Instead they soon arrived at a small lake, hidden within the rock formation. The water was green and murky and Bianca noticed how the Scions avoided stepping into it. She followed their example and told her crew to do the same. The bank of the lake was about three metres wide and consisted of the same grey rocks they had been clambering over since they had left the clearing. Bianca noticed how there wasn't any vegetation, nor did she see any animals, fish nor birds. She wondered why, because this pond should serve the local wildlife as a watering hole. About halfway along the lake, Iris raised her hand. The scions immediately searched for cover and the man who had watched over the crew signalled to get down. Bianca kneeled behind a large boulder and laid the hellgun on the rock. She swallowed. She could feel that something was about to happen. She felt the same knot in her stomach as before, but even so, a little smile appeared on her face. "Stand ready." she whispered. Only Miroslav gave her a soft 'booya' in return. Two scions got out of cover and ran towards the rock cliff. Bianca saw they were carrying melta charges. The familiar rush of adrenaline came over her and she wondered if she wasn't too far away from the action. She probably was at the far end of the effective range of the hellgun. But there was no time to change position anymore. The scions attached the two demolition packs and started to run back. "Ten seconds!" Primundo yelled. Bianca counted down until suddenly she realized something was wrong.

In the blink of an eye the rock cliff was gone and before anyone could react, two Eldar stood in its place in front of some kind of tunnel. They wore a red and white armour, covering them from head to toe. Bianca saw how they looked like strung out versions of a regular human. A bit too long and a bit too thin. Each held one of the charges. Bianca's count was at three. The next moment they both threw, strangely synchronic, the melta charges at the Imperial positions before turning tail and disappearing. The first one to recover from the suprise was Primundo. "Fire!" he commanded and a dozen hellguns sprayed the entrance of the Eldar position. The next moment the two melta packs detonated. Rocks the size of a man's head were thrown in the air and pummeled the Imperials. Nothing remained of the two scions that had been the target of the Eldar's counterattack. "Storm them! Secure a bridgehead." Bianca realized that Primundo's order was folly, but nevertheless the scions scrambled out of cover and ran as quickly as they could towards the entrance. Bianca did the same. "Come on!" she yelled at her crew. Miroslav was of course the first to follow her, his gunners following his example. Bianca didn't wait for the rest. The first troopers had reached the entrance and threw smoke cannisters and then laid down a barrage of las fire. The impromptu charge quickly changed into a tactical advance using covering fire and concealment. Iris and Primundo had already disappeared in the tunnel and the crew's supervisor had also joined the attack, leaving the sailors of the Aeronautica as the effective rear guard. Bianca cursed, but knew the importance of such a position. She quickly splitted her crew in two. The lance corporal with Victorina and a gunner, and Gomez with the other two. She would oversee the manoeuvre.

Although this really was out of the crew's comfort zone, Bianca noted that they were doing a fine job. As they proceeded into the tunnel, which was lit even though no one saw lumen strips or globes, they hopped over each other's position, following the din of battle that lay ahead. They mostly heard the characteristic snapping sound of lasfire, but after a few dozen metres they passed the first Imperial corpse. The walls of the tunnel were no longer made of the grey rock, but instead they encountered an unnatural white substance, elegantly shaped in a cone shaped tunnel: wraithbone. At fixed intervals, about twenty metres apart, a large, buttressed column rose against the wall, supposedly supporting the ceiling which continued to grow higher and higher. They passed another two bodies of scions, intertwined with an Eldar soldier who had suffered numerous shots to the chest of which small black holes, still smoking, testified. "What the frak." Gomez cursed. "If this goes on, we'll soon be the rearguard and the vanguard." Bianca didn't appreciate the comment. "Let's keep it up. Don't get distracted." she commanded, trying to keep the minds of her crew focused. The tunnel softly twisted to the right and soon enough the exit, which had already been just a bright spot of light, disappeared from view. "Throne. How deep does this thing go?" Vic cursed in turn. As they passed a first crossroad, Bianca tried to shut her down. "We'll go as deep as needed. The Emperor protects!" The pilot could easily identify the path of the interrogator. The walls of the arched tunnel to the left were riddled with burn marks of the hotshot lasguns. She looked back to survey the progress of her team. The last of them had only just turned around the corner, when Bianca saw two Eldar. Or at least she thought she saw them. They wore bone white armour with a typical conic helmet. "Open fire!" yelled Bianca and turned her own words into deeds. Her hellgun spitted out red lasfire at an incredible speed and she caught one of the Xeno right in the chest. It didn't chew through the Eldar, but apparently it did enough damage to make it stumble and fall. The other one though was onto their last man, Rasvik, one of the gunners. Bianca didn't understand why the rest hadn't opened fire. She wanted to fire, but her field of fire was obstructed. But it would soon be cleared out. Rasvik didn't stand a chance and he was cut down before he could even bring his hellgun up. The Eldar didn't slow down and cried out some sort of battle cry. It feinted a strike with its sword. The next gunner didn't even realize that he'd been tricked. The Xeno was so quick that she too wouldn't have been able to aim true. He died, stupefied by the sudden appearance of his own innards on the ground. The next in line was Victorina who just sprinted towards Bianca. "Fire! Fire!" Bianca yelled panicking. The Eldar was just too fast. Miroslav and Asser, the remaining half of the gun crew opened fire, sending a tangle of las fire through the narrow corridor. For once Vic was lucky to be a bit clumsy. She tripped over her own feet and landed flat on her belly. Thanks to its upernatural reflexes the Eldar still managed to adapt his swing to cut the lieutenant in the shoulder, but then it got sprayed with the high powered las fire of the hellguns. It screamed one last time and then fell to its knees before finally collapsing to the floor.

Now that the action was over, Bianca took a deep breath. The only sounds to be heard were the echoes of the lasfire of the scions down the corridor and the soft moaning of Victorina. "GZ. Get the tags." she said, keeping her voice steady. "Corporal. Cover him." It wasn't the first time she had lost parts of her crew, but she was shocked by the deadliness of their Xeno opponent. From Asser's pack she retrieved a first aid kit and ran over to Victorina. "Stay down." she said to the rookie, "I'm gonna take care of you." The Eldar sword had caused a deep gash in Vic's flesh, but from the looks of it, it hadn't been able to damage the shoulder joint. "You'll be fine." she said to reassure the moaning woman. Just as she sprayed desinfectant on the wound, the woman craned her head and looked at her. Bianca looked back, momentarily distracted from her work. "This is all your fault, wytch." Victorina hissed, "I should have never... never stepped back in a plane with something like you." Completely baffled by the lieutenant's accusation, Bianca sat back, ass on her feet, the spray hanging aimlessly in the air. The expression on Victorina's face spelled hatred. "And we're all gonna frakking die out here because you don't know when to frakking quit. Throne. I wish Marcks would have believed me when I told him about you." Bianca almost missed that last part, still looking for words to react. Once more she was saved by Gomez who came running by. "Let's go, Bunny. I don't think we should fall too far behind." That made Bianca regain her senses. Without further ado, she retrieved the compact flesh stapler from the first aid kit. "No time for an anaestethic lieutenant." she said and she immediately proceeded by grabbing the two flaps of muscle, pushing them together and ramming a metal binder into them. Victorina cried out, but Bianca punched in another two staples. "That should hold until we can get you to a medic." She stood up, not offering a hand to help Vic up. Instead she gave her orders. "New teams. Miroslav. You're with GZ. Asser. You're with the lieutenant. Bianca didn't know whether the others had overheard her conversation with Vic, but she wasn't about to give them the time to mull it over if they had.

"No." Bianca looked back down at Victorina who was picking herself up. "No." the woman repeated. "I'm heading back. We shouldn't even be here." Gomez, recognizing the situation for what it was, stepped in. "Vic. You should stick with us. You'll never make it out on your own." Victorina now stood back up and picked up her hellgun. "I'll take my chances. At least I'm retreating. At least I'm not intentionally seeking out the enemy. You are all fools if you think you're equipped to deal with what lies ahead." Gomez wanted to answer, but Bianca held up her hand. Gomez' soft approach hadn't worked, so she took matters in her own hands. "I gave you a direct order, lieutenant." Victorina stared at her superior, bringing the hellgun in a firing position. Then she snorted and asked incredulously. "You gave me an order?" Shaking her head, she started to laugh. "You are the first to ignore such a thing. Why wouldn't I follow your example?" Gomez wanted to intervene, but Bianca cut him short. "If you're not able to distinguish those situations where you should ignore orders, you shouldn't be refusing any... Rookie... Now fall in." Victorina broke eye contact and instead looked over Bianca's companions. Bianca guessed she was looking for signs in the others that indicated that they too wanted to leave. She felt pretty sure of herself. The only one who might doubt was Asser, but as long as Miroslav was around he would follow the lance-corporal. And she was dead certain that Miroslav wouldn't leave her side.

It seemed that Victorina was coming to the same conclusion. "So, you're all going to follow the wytch?" Bianca clenched her jaw. 'Again? What the frak is she doing undermining my authority with such outrageous accusations?' Bianca wanted to knock Klönner down. She felt it in every inch of her body. Still, it would weaken her position, she thought. She was just about to tell Victorina, for the last time, to fall in, when Gomez passed her by and fulfilled the burning need she had felt. With a right hook, he knocked the lieutenant back against the floor. He kicked away the hellgun, well out of her reach. "We don't have time for this Klönner. We're heading out now. Good luck on your own." He almost spat the words at her, leaning over the cringing form of the lieutenant. The lieutenant sobbed, once. And then turned to sit on her hands and her knees, crawling towards the gun. "You don't want to see it. She sees things before they are happening. Just now, she did it again. She did it during the dogfight. Frak. It was her wytchcraft which caused the complete instrument failure. That's what they do. They are unnatural. Everything staggers at their presence and their powers, man and machine." She took hold of the hellgun. Gomez had followed her every step of the way. He kicked her in the ass, sending her back against the floor. He kicked the lieutenant in her ribs. And then took the hellgun away. "Mir! Grab those other guns. We shouldn't give this traitor any means to backstab us." Then the navigator leaned in closer again. "You run now, you frak. You're going nowhere. You can't get the bird in the air on your own. So good luck being stuck two hundred clicks behind enemy lines. You stupid frak." This time, he did spit on her and then turned away.

Bianca didn't really know what to do. Klönner was sobbing. Mir had picked up the hellguns, but only hesitantly. Asser's face was pale as chalk. And GZ... She had never seen Gomez in this state. His face had reddened and he was clearly clinging on by his fingernails. This agression wasn't anything like him. And while they stood there, Bianca was painfully aware of the fact that every second they spend here, was one where interrogator Primundo, his acolyte Iris and the scions were getting further away. 'Was it a folly to come here?' she asked herself for the first time. Her eyes fell on the bodies of the two gunners who had been cut down. She shook her head. The men needed a firm hand right now. "Gomez. Give her that hellgun. Klönner. If you can get yourself together, pull back to the Mastiff. If you make it and we make it, we'll take you with us." Leaving Klönner was bad enough for morale, but taking away her weapons and condemning her to her death... That was too much. But she also couldn't look past her transgressions, so she added: "We'll leave it to the fleet commissariat to sort you out. Now let's move out. We're switching. Corporal, you're taking point. Sergeant, you cover him. Asser and I will cover the rear. We're double timing it. It seems like speed is our best friend now. And it looks like our friends have rooted out the enemy between us and them. Go!" The three men remaining under her command immediately complied with her orders. Bianca took one last look at Klönner who she probably would never see again. The woman was trying to steady her breathing and was struggling to get to a sitting position against the wall. "I didn't want to go down this road, Vic. But you forced my hand. Good luck." The lieutenant didn't look up, nor did she reply, so Bianca turned away and followed her men into the gloomy corridor beyond.


	10. Chapter 10: Warlock

Bianca rejoined her men and quickened the pace. Their hastiness soon paid off. The noise of gunfire rose and they had no trouble at all following the trail of blood and bodies the Inquisitorial detail had left behind. Mostly they encountered the bodies of scions. One was even breathing, but too heavily wounded to keep moving. Without words he just pointed them in the right direction, still holding his hellgun firmly in his hands even though his blood poured from him like water from a deep gash in his calf. When Gomez wanted to stop to tend to his wounds, the man shook his head with a grim look on his face. "They need you more than I do. For the Emperor sailor." he hissed. Bianca ordered the advance and they left the man to die. A couple of minutes later they connected with the rearguard of Primundo's party. The last scion in the row gave a curt nod and sprinted to the fore, leaving it to Bianca to take over his position. Bianca issued her orders, switching back to two man teams that bunnyhopped over each other, but soon she needed to change her tactics again. The corridor they had been following ended and the next moment they found themselves in a large cavern, its high walls made of the same white wraithbone. Bianca looked up and saw that the arched ceiling was at least thirty metres up. Although there weren't any statues or frescos, the hall was bewitchingly beautiful. There were columns of strange but simple symbols etched in the walls. It didn't have any sharp angles, but Bianca thought it had a hexagonal layout. But even though it was a - for lack of words - graceful construction, Bianca felt ill at ease. The floor rose towards the middle of the room, although not nearly as sharply as the ceiling, creating a flattened peak at about forty metres of the entrance. On that platform stood a white wraithbone throne speckled with irregularly cut blue gems. And before that throne stood another Xeno although it seemed to shimmer in and out existence.

"Target acquired. Iris! Do it!" Primundo yelled. Bianca didn't exactly know what to expect but a moment later she could hear the faint screams at the back of her head again. The psyker had opened herself to the warp and was doing her wytchcraft. Whatever she was planning, the Eldar weren't waiting for it to happen. Just like their counterattack at the entrance of the complex, they appeared out of nowhere. About halfway up the walls, the wraithbone disappeared at three places and made place for two-by-two balconies, like lodges of an Imperial theatre, although these were set up more as pillboxes with breast high cover. In a blink of an eye, two Eldar soldiers appeared on each balcony, their shuriken catapults at the ready. "Base of fire." one of the scions yelled. The black armoured troops - there were only six of them left after their run through the passageways - quickly split in two groups of three, throwing themselves against the ground, trying to maximize the benefit of the partial cover of the inclined floor. But before their hellguns could start barking two had already been killed by the fire from above. Bianca ordered Asser to take a position next to the remaining scion on the right. The pale faced gunner complied and sprinted to the position. On the left side, the barrage of the two hellguns hadn't killed any of the Xenos, but it had chewed away part of the cover and forced the two Eldar to retreat.

In the meanwhile, Iris had knelt down at the entrance of the hall and put her left hand flat on the floor while raising her right one, bracelet clenched between her long fingers. She was still mumbling things while Primundo stood guard over her. Bianca didn't know what she was doing, but it seemed imperative that the acolyte wasn't disturbed. And it probably had something to do with the fact that the Eldar in front of the throne wasn't doing anything. 'Perhaps she's distracting him with her wytchcraft.' Bianca thought. She took position against the wall of the corridor and added her lasfire to that of Asser and the scion on the right. "Gomez. Cover the rear. Mir. Left." The words had just left her mouth when a shuriken barrage tore through Asser and the scion on the left. The scion kept firing, his heavy carapace armour deflecting the worst of the attack, but Asser, who only wore a flak vest over his flight suit, didn't stand a chance. The gunner was killed instantly. "Fraaaak!" Bianca cursed, feeling a sense of panic in her belly. "Mir, take his place!" With a grim expression on his face, the lance corporal stepped out of cover and stepped towards the position of the fallen Asser. He fired his hellgun from the hip, tearing away at the Eldar barricade. "For the Emperor! For Rasvik! For Ass..." He was cut off when another volley of shuriken bolts effectively cut him in half. Bianca didn't even get a second to think. "Bunnyyy!" Gomez cried from her back. Swiftly followed by the noise of his hellgun firing at full auto. She turned around and saw another two Eldar approaching through the corridor with incredible speed. These two were of the same kind as the ones they encountered before in the passageways. She saw how their helmets bobbed up and down, gracefully in sync with their racing legs, their swords going up and down rhythmicly, apparently unhindered by the crisp white armour plates they carried all over their body. Even before she could level her own hellgun to add to Gomez' barrage, the Eldar closed the distance of fifteen metres and were upon them, practicaly ignoring Gomez' suppressing fire. The navigator raised his gun to fend off the first swing of the Eldar sword. It was the last mistake he would ever make. The power weapon sliced through the metal like it was butter and then continued its path, burrying itself in the middle of the sergeant's skull. The power sword cut through bone, flesh and sinew and ended in the man's thorax.

A sudden coldness came over Bianca. Time seemed to slow down. The panic she had felt, disappeared and made place for her burning choler. Instead of moving with unnatural speed, the storm guardians slowed their movements and Bianca could easily predict their swings, kicks and punches. She twisted out of the way of the second Eldar's sword, spinning around her axis and giving the xeno a light bump in the shoulder, making sure it needed to take an extra step. She opened fire on the first one, his sword still stuck in Gomez bloody corpse. The Eldar didn't hesitate and threw itself backwards, the sword slicing trough Gomez chest again, effectively cutting away a quarter of his body. Bianca was amazed by the incredible feat of agility to dodge the automatic fire at such close distance. She wanted to follow up the volley with another burst, but at her left the second banshee was throwing another attack at her. Bianca saw what it was doing. The thrust would pierce her right at her navel, so she twisted again, out of the way of the trust and thew her elbow against the white mask of the xeno. Her attack missed punch and not a second later she realized she wouldn't be able to harm the banshee with her bare hands. The two Eldar noticed how the last human continued to resist. "Flank the monkeigh." the first one instructed the second. "She can't harm us, unless she manages to shoot us with that gun." Bianca only heard gibberish, but their intention quickly became obvious. Coming at her from both sides, her advantage to predict their strikes, was nullified. In perfect unison the two raised their swords. Bianca could see no way to evade them. With a cry of anger, which reached her ears awfully distorted, she decided to at least try and take one of them with her. She completely ignored all defensive precautions and just focused on delivering one burst to the head of her opponent. She wanted to pull the trigger when she saw a bright flash and she could swear she saw the Eldar that charged her from the room, got its shoulder consumed by bright white energy.

'It won't be able to finish his attack.' Bianca realized and instinctively she dived to the floor towards it, using her only escape possibility to dodge the other sword. Still, she was struck by the other xeno and she felt how it grazed her right shoulder. Her dive turned into a tumble and she felt how she crashed against the wounded Eldar, knocking it down. The guardian that remained pulled a pistol and fired. To dodge the attack, Bianca dropped her hellgun and rolled away, trying to avoid getting cut to pieces by the bolts. She noticed how the fallen Eldar was still trashing, although the movement had lost its grace and it seemed the creature was just spasming from the pain. Bianca's eyes fell on the sword the xeno had carried and she kicked at its arm, trying to crush the hand holding the sword under her heel. Again, her attack didn't harm the alien any further, but it did lose its grip on the sword. Ignoring the blue flashing projectiles all around her, she rolled futher and grabbed the sword. She was just in time to rise it and fend of the next attack of the remaining banshee. The two power swords collided and blue energy sparked of the blades. Bianca rolled backwards, in the direction of the hall, to create some distance between her and her assailant.

With one of the opponents down, she had regained the advantage. But something else was happening too. A voice, she didn't know where it came from and wasn't going to spend time doing so, whispered to press on. She felt even colder, her head was throbbing and to her surprise she could now see not just one sword moving slowly enough to easily parry it, but three. Instinctively she recognized these as potential futures. The Eldar had three options and she could see all three of them. With that knowledge she started moving and weaved through the pattern, suprised at how easily it all went. In fact, it was so easy that she almost forgot to strike at her foe. The Eldar sword felt somehow reassuring in her hand. Like it had been made especially for her even though the hilt was made for hands a tad longer than hers. She nicked the arm of the Eldar, but although the sword was sharp enough to cut through its armour, she hadn't aimed all too well. The Eldar cursed again. The xeno came at her. This time far more cautious. Instead of three paths for her enemy's sword, she saw a dozen. 'Provoke it. That'll make it chose.' the voice whispered and Bianca moved from words to deeds. A slight feint was enough to eliminate all but two paths. The xeno reacted and once again Bianca danced away from its strike. She came within the xeno's guard and went for a crosswise swing, catching the Eldar in the chest. She pressed her advantage. The Eldar tried to put her back on the defensive, but with her superior sense, Bianca didn't allow her to do so. An underhand swing caught the xeno in its thigh. Bleeding from two wounds, the number of its possibilities dwindled even further. With a final overhead strike, Bianca finished the guardian.

It was only then that she started to realize what had happened. She noticed that the wraithbone walls were covered in hoarfrost. The blood of comrades and xeno alike had frozen into thousands of little crystals littering the floor. She picked up on the distinct smell of ozone. The pain from her wounded shoulder came at her, making Bianca sharply suck in the stinking air. Her head was throbbing and she wanted to sit down. She felt overwhelmed. The realization that she actually was a wytch, was fighting to get through the pain and overcome her. But an urgent cry from behind her prevented that from happening.

She turned, Eldar sword in hand and saw that the situation for the Imperials was growing desperate. Only three Scions remained. Primundo added his fire to that of the scions and shouted at her at the same time. He fired another melta blast at the Eldar barricade and gestured with his head for Bianca to follow him. Iris was still in the same position, but Bianca saw how the floor beneath her was sprayed with tiny droplets of blood. Without thinking any further she followed the interrogator on his way up towards the throne in the middle of the room. Shuriken bolts whizzed past her even though the three remaining scions intensified their supressing fire. When she passed the other psyker, she saw that she was breathing heavily and bleeding out of her nose and ears. Every time she exhaled, little flecks of spit and blood left her mouth. Bianca ran past her and started climbing towards the figure in front of the throne. Almost inevitably, a shuriken bolt grazed her left hip, cutting open her pants and flesh alike. Luckily the wound wasn't very deep and she continued her path. At that moment she saw how the Eldar at the top, whose figure still was a shimmering visual echo, reached inside his long black and white robes and retrieved something akin to a pistol. In the blink of an eye the gun was levelled and aimed at the two Imperials storming its position. Bianca didn't see any futures and broke in a roll, making sure that the xeno could only target on of them at a time and hopefully dodging its attack. Primundo on the other hand just charged on, trying to close the distance as quickly as possible. The Eldar picked its target and a blue eldritch blast was fired of the tip of the gun. Too fast to follow, Bianca could only see that it consumed the interrogator. The blue light washed over him, when suddenly it dissipated and an unnatural white light surrounded the man if only for a fraction of a second. The interrogator, unscathed, dropped his combibolter and pulled his strangely slender chainsword from the scabbard on his belt. "For the Emperor, captain!" he cried out. "Kill the warlock!"

Bianca didn't catch those last words - the revving of the chainsword was drowning out the interrogator's voice - but got the meaning anyway. She scrambled up and closed the last few metres to the warlock. And immediately took back two steps. The Eldar had switched out its pistol for a double-bladed scimitar and had very nearly cut the pilot open from groin to neck with an underhand swing. When Bianca blinked her eyes, she still saw the afterglow of the soft white, gleaming blade. She moved to the right, trying to flank the Eldar, but it did a very good job of fending her off with the back end of its sword. Clearly the interrogator and she were outmatched. Although Primundo immediately proved to be a veteran duelist - the chainsword seemed like a snake in his hands, dancing from left to right and up and down - he didn't even got close to hitting the extremely nimble warlock. Half of the time the xeno didn't even need to parry his strikes. A simple step to the side or a slight bend backwards was enough to make the interrogator miss. Primundo launched another attack, driving the Eldar back a few steps, bringing him within reach of Bianca's sword. "Now captain!" he yelled. Bianca, who couldn't even be called a novice in the art of swordplay, clumsily thrusted her sword fowards. The attack was easily parried by the Eldar and Bianca had to take another few steps backwards to avoid being skewered. She realized that she was useless without her wytchcraft. It seemed Primundo had come to the same conclusion. With a snarl he yelled: "Iris. More! More!"

Bianca didn't know what to expect. She held the power sword two-handedly in front of her - her idea of a defensive stance - and tried to concentrate to reactivate her power. When she felt a familiar pressure at the back of her head, she thought she had done it. Primundo, who had danced around the warlock and now stood between Bianca and the xeno, just finished a flurry of blows and now anticipated a riposte. Bianca decided not to grant the Eldar such a counterstrike. With a fierce cry she jumped past the interrogator and swung her sword from left to right, trying to cut the Eldar in half. Her strike was stopped brutally by the Eldar, the two powerfields of the weapons crackling. White sparks flashed and Bianca realized that she couldn't see any futures at all. Feeling helpless, she didn't know anything better than to press on, precisely the thing no sane duelist would have ever done, including the warlock. Completely surprised by her foolish manoeuvre, the Eldar failed to land his first counterattack. But the xeno soon recovered from his surprise and put in another attack. Primundo tried to distract the xeno, but his ploy was far too simple for the warlock who had a thousand years of experience over the two humans. With one end of his scimitar he sundered Primundo's weapon, the chainsword falling to the floor, cut in two at the hilt. The other cut through Bianca's chest, unhindered by the light flak vest she wore. Agonizing pain went through her. With teary eyes she could see that the other end of its sword was coming to finish her of.

The strike never came. Bianca saw how the warlock faltered and grabbed his helmet with one hand. It said something indistuingishable. If Bianca had to guess, a curse or a cry of pain. Then suddenly, the eldar folded in two as if he had been hit in the stomach by an Ogryn. Bianca rolled her head to look down the incline. Something had attracted her attention. There she saw, upside down, the form of Iris, Primundo's psyker. She had been kneeling, one hand flat on the ground, the other raised in the air, when Bianca had last seen her. Now though, her entire body was hovering in the air. The only thing still touching the ground was her left hand. It seemed like gravity had shifted and that she was dangling from the floor. A weak, red light shimmered around the arm connected to the ground. Bianca couldn't tell what kind of force Iris was harnessing, but she did notice the damage it was causing. From the psyker's nose, blood no longer dripped but seemed to stream out of her nostrils. She was coughing violently, interrupting her own invocations. Then suddenly she vomited, a stream of blood and gore coming from her mouth. The psyker was desintregrating from the inside.

Bianca looked back up at the warlock. It was still swaying softly from left to right. Then suddenly it cried out, pointing his sword at the floating psyker. A white, eldritch blast hit the psyker in the back. Then, things went really fast. Bianca couldn't tell whether it was the recoil of its attack or the fact that Iris had been hit, but the Eldar took two hesitating steps backwards, freed from Iris' influence. Bianca only heard a soft thud of Iris' body hitting the floor. Primundo took the opportunity to crash into the warlock, taking the xeno in a stranglehold with both his arms. And then, more instinct than tactic, Bianca sweeped the Eldar sword across its legs, cutting both its feet off and very nearly doing the same with the interrogator. The Eldar cried out and once more Bianca's mind was assaulted as if it was being tugged across thousand sharp mirror shards. Like the Eldar she cried out in pain. Then, the feeling stopped as sudden as it had come over her. She got up to one knee and raised her head, just in time to see Primundo pull out a combat knife from the Eldar's armpit.


	11. Chapter 11: Bounty

Silence reigned for a few seconds, every participant momentarily stunned by the death of the warlock. The lull in battle didn't last long though. The scions were the first to come to their senses and reopened fire on the remaining warriors behind their barricades. Their return fire was scattered and lacked coordination and Bianca realized that the warlock probably had had some influence on their lines of fire. Primundo didn't spend time overthinking the tactical situation but dropped the warlock's body rather unceremoniously and jumped behind the throne. Although a few Eldar abandoned their position, shuriken bolts whizzed through the air again and Bianca followed the interrogator's example, her body still benefitting from all the adrenaline, ignoring the wound in her chest. She looked back down at the body of Iris. "The wytch," she corrected herself, "The psyker. Is she... Is she dead?" Primundo just shrugged. "We'll find out later." The interrogator started examining the throne. His hands went over the armrests and he knocked on the wraithbone backseat. Regardless of the recent discovery that Iris and she were one of a kind, she found Primundo's casual dismissal of the acolyte quite reprehensible. Bianca and the rest of the Chariots were in the habit of saving wounded soldiers rather than leaving them to die. The interrogator's image of a jovial and man full of laughter got a serious dent.

Bianca considered running back down, but then she saw that one of the scions had grabbed the psyker by her clothes and was pulling her back towards the exit. "We should be leaving, interrogator." she said and she cursed herself for having lost all her weapons except for the power sword. "No," Primundo told her in a calm voice, "First we're gonna fulfill our mission. He crept unto the seating, still using the backseat as cover and pulled full force at a little lip of wraithbone near the top of the throne. With a snapping sound, something came loose and a hidden compartment was suddenly visible in the throne. "Yes. Finally!" the interrogator exclaimed between gritted teeth. He pulled out a large ring. It too was made of wraithbone. The circlular object had fine, little thornes and in the outer rim, one could discern the strange scripture of the Eldar. Bianca could easily imagine it being some sort of crown that the person on the throne would wear. A tiny cable was attached to the crown and it disappeared in the dark compartment. Primundo gently tried to wrench it loose, but his attempts proved unsuccesful. "Frak." He cursed softly. He brought his combat knife to bare and tried to cut it. When that didn't work, he tried a sawing motion, but the material seemed impervious to the steel. Bianca lost her patience. "Watch it." she said before using her looted power sword. "Wait! Don't..." Primundo said, but Bianca had already hit the cable, missing the interrogator's hand by a finger's width.

"Frak captain. You do know how to get to business." Primundo said, a wide smile on his face despite the circumstances they found themselves in. "Let's get out of here." A second later the man was sprinting down the slope and Bianca could swear that she heard him laughing. The enemy fire had withered down and had almost completely disappeared. Bianca suspected that the Eldar that kept shooting at them were a decoy and that the rest was coming for them, perhaps laying an ambush in the narrow passageways. She wouldn't be surprised if they would create a bottleneck at the entrance of the underground complex. Still, she gave it her all when she commenced her descent. She realized that the Emperor must have been looking out for her seeing as only a single hit of a shuriken bolt could be enough to kill a human. 'Maybe He notices psykers more easily. They all get to go to the Golden Throne after all.' She didn't know where the thought had come from, but somehow, even as she was running past the bodies of the fallen scions, she felt more secure. Primundo dove past a scion into the corridor. The man continued his supressing fire, covering Bianca, even as she slid to a halt beside the body of gunner Asser and lance-corporal Miroslav. "Get in cover!" yelled the scion. "I'm almost out!"

Bianca stubbornly ignored the man and pulled at the dogtags of the two crewmembers. She would be damned before withholding them the chance to be remembered. "Come... on!" the man yelled irritated as if he was trying to get a sluggish schola child to hurry up lacing its boots. "No!" yelled the interrogator, "Get that box!" In a flash, Bianca remembered the briefing by the arrogant man at the colonel's office, whom she now realized was an Inquisitorial acolyte. She should have picked up Primundo himself and a small jewelry box at all costs. She looked around, a bit dizzy. She didn't see the thing, but she did notice the blood seeping through the clean cut in her flak vest. "Oh dammit captain. It's right there!" She followed Primundo's pointing finger and finally caught onto the small box, its upper half sticking out of the backpack of one of the fallen scions. She stashed the tags of her gunners in one of the many pockets of her flight suit's pants and pulled the box free. With a quick flick she threw it over to Primundo. The scion fired of a last volley. The hellgun made a sad, clicking sound indicating that the las pack was completely depleted. Bianca didn't know whether the remaining Eldar would notice that, but she didn't take any chances and dove for the relative safety of the corridor.

Five foot further down the hall, one of the scions was applying synth spray on Iris' wound, instantly creating a thin layer of synthskin, but judging by the corpse colour of her face, the wound on her back wasn't the psyker's biggest problem. As soon as he was done, the scion stepped over to Bianca and repeated the treatment. "Will you be able to run?" Bianca didn't know for sure. She felt her limbs trembling. And if she was honest, she was having a hard time concentrating. The fight with the xeno had exhausted her more than she wanted to admit. Instead, she just nodded. "Ok." the scion replied, calm and businesslike. Bianca wondered for a second how these men managed to remain so level-headed in these circumstances. They had suffered insane losses - Bianca tried not to think of her own - but still they continued the fight as motivated and professional as if they were Astartes. They were busy doing weapon checks and retrieving spare ammo packs from the fallen. The one who had taken care of her wounds, was putting something together although Bianca's mind couldn't focus enough to see what it was. Primundo had his back turned towards her, but she could still see that he was putting something in the box she had retrieved for him. Bianca crept over to GZ's body and retrieved the tags the navigator had taken from the gunners that had fallen before. She avoided looking at the man's head. She knew it would be too much for her to be confronted with the gruesome result of the Eldar's attack. Her eye fell on one of the sergeant's tags laying next to his body. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "This wasn't meant to happen." Before she could say more, Primundo stood next to her, put a hand under her shoulder, thankfully sparing the wounded one, and pulled her up. "We need to go." Then, as if belately realizing something, he added with a sad smile. "Your friend has fought well. We'll honour him later." Bianca swallowed away the tears that burned behind her eyes and nodded bravely. "We will."

When she got up, she saw how one of the scions was already leading the way in a brisk pace, hellgun at the ready. The two others followed her with Iris between them on a field stretcher. Bianca only now realized that the stretcher had been the thing the scion doubling as medic had been putting together. Primundo gave her a gentle but decided push to make her fall in line. She took a first few steps and then stumbled, falling to her knee. Immediately Primundo stood beside her. "I thought you could walk." Suddenly Bianca felt too tired to answer. The adrenaline had left her system and with the first pain of her wounds slowly ebbing away, she was starting to realize what had happened: she had gotten her entire team killed. She had abandoned her co-pilot. She was wounded badly. And to top it of, she was a frakking wytch. Which meant that Vic had been right all along. She didn't got up. The interrogator sighed and Bianca realized that he was going to leave her there. The man had proven to be ruthless, sacrificying everything to fulfill his mission. She knew she was a dead man. Whether she returned to base or not. 'So why bother getting up.'

"I appreciate you're having a crisis, but I still kinda need you." Primundo reached back down and pulled her up again. "Put your hand over my shoulder. We've given them a bloody nose. We just need to get out of here before they come to their senses." Bianca raised an eyebrow when she saw Primundo was once again giving her an encouraging smile. Surely the man was disturbed. Nevertheless, he started walking and tugged her along. "Come on now. We shouldn't tempt fate any further. And roaming this xeno... facility is hardly what you call a pleasant passtime." Bianca was too tired to respond and let Primundo pull her onwards. When he started jogging, she coughed and laughed ever so briefly, feeling incredulous at the man's energy and persistance. After that, the trip back became a haze. She remembered how she had felt utterly surprised when she had felt the sun on her face again. But the rest of the trek back towards the Mastiff happened in a blur. Until they came at the end of the rocky path down to the prairie.

There, with her back against a large black boulder, sat lieutenant Klönner. Her eyes were red from crying and she had wrapped her arms around her knees. Her hellgun lay at her feet. Bianca didn't see her first reaction when the scions found her, but her expression betrayed surprise and relief. Until she laid her eyes on Bunny. A look full of loathing was her part. Primundo stopped at the sitting pilot, still supporting Bianca. "I see you've made it as well lieutenant. I'm glad." He gave her his winning smile. "Do get up and be so good as to join us." Vic was speachless for a moment. The last thing she expected from an interrogator of the Inquisition was a friendly invitation to join him. Especially after she had abandoned her comrades. "But..." she sputtered. "Not to worry lieutenant. I'm sure your CO and you will find a way to make amends." Primundo continued, hoisting the co-pilot to her feet and giving her a little push to get her moving. He gave Bianca an apologetic look and waited until Vic was out of earshot. The smile on his face changed to a mocking grin. "Do you need that squeezie to get your bird into the air?" Bianca noticed once again that she was dealing with a very dangerous man. Once more she got the feeling that he would do anything and use any means to obtain his goal. She looked at the little strongbox that dangled at Primundo's side, attached to his belt with two blackened, reinforced steel chains. For a second she wondered why an interrogator would need xeno technology, but perhaps he was just making sure that the Eldar couldn't repair the damage done. And although the facility hadn't looked like a military base, she didn't know if the xeno actually were using the throne and crown to aid them in their fight.

Primundo scraped his throat, bringing Bianca back to the present. Although he had asked the question rather casually, it seemed he still wanted an answer. So Bianca answered, not really sure what consequences she had to expect. "It can only help." Primundo smiled again, more friendly this time. "Ok. If you say so. Let's catch up with the others." The scions and Vic had gone onwards and were now halfway to the Valk. Primundo offered her his shoulder again, but Bianca refused it, picking up the pace, feeling her wounds ache with every step. She heard a soft chuckle behind her. Then the interrogator was back beside her, easily catching up. "What's wrong?" he asked, his voice soft and confidential. Bianca didn't really want to get into it. There were lots of things wrong. But now, the thing that bothered her the most was that by stumbling over Klönner, Bianca had to face the consequences of her own actions. The lieutenant had been right from the start. She had been a wytch. She hadn't been suited to lead her crew here - you couldn't argue with results - and she had dismissed and abandoned the one person that had tried to make that clear. Bianca felt ashamed. Both for being a wytch as for her behaviour. And now, here she was, with a man she couldn't trust but had to follow.

"Nothing. It's quite alright sir. Let's just get out of here." She quickened her pace, trying to ignore the flaring pain in her chest. Primundo adapted his speed to match hers. "You didn't know you were a psyker, did you?" Bianca immediately felt tears burning behind her eyes and blinked violently to keep them there. "I see." Primundo said, his voice reflecting a mixture of pity and comprehension. "You probably think you're a wytch or something." Bianca didn't answer, but you didn't need to have had an Arbite training to read her. "Well," Primundo continued, "Technically you are a wytch. But before you jump to any conclusions..." Primundo made a calming motion with his hands. "You might need to be educated a bit. What do you know about psykers?" Bianca quickly glanced aside. "I... When I was little... I've seen one... It was..." Primundo put his hand on Bianca's shoulder, stopping her in her tracks. The rest of the detail had already disappeared in the belly of the Mastiff except for one scion who had started pulling down the cameo nets. "You've seen an awakening, did you?" Bianca just nodded. "I'm sure it wasn't pretty." Primundo said compassionate. "And I can guess what happened next. You never saw that person again. And someone, probably a priest told all of you that he or she was bad to the bone." The interrogator fell silent for a second. "Were you close?" Bianca shook her head. "Still, I'm sorry," the man said with a soft voice, "It never is pleasant to witness such a thing. And it sometimes is dangerous or even deadly. There's a reason people are afraid of the wytch. Their fear is justified, but it also makes them blind." From the Mastiff came the first noises of the engines starting up. Primundo grabbed her shoulder again and started walking towards the plane. "Has anyone ever properly explained what happens to psykers? I'm pretty sure no one did. The majority of the people only knows stories and legends. Mostly about the Black Ships and the Sisters of Silence. The people who really know what's going on, really shouldn't talk about it freely. As well they shouldn't. But in this situation, I think I can make an exception." The interrogator had lowered his voice and the ruckus from the Mastiff only grew louder, so Bianca leaned in, desperate to learn what was going to happen to her. "The Black Ships are of course real. And so are the Sisters of Silence. Normally, they ferry all psykers they can find to Terra. There they undergo a process of sanctification. This makes sure they use their powers for the good of the Imperium. It grants them protection from the Warp."

Bianca made a face which reflected her incomprehension. Bianca had always seen the Warp as some sort of sea that stretched out between the stars and planets of the Imperium and beyond. She knew it was a fickle thing - ships got delayed or were lost completely - but she hadn't known that it posed a threat for individual psykers. Sure, there were stories that there were creatures, some said daemons, living in the Warp and the attention a Mechanicus crew on average spent on a ship's Gellar-fields meant that they were important. Still, Bianca attributed most of those stories to sailors with a bit too much imagination or a profound love of amasec. Primundo started explaining. "There are... entities... that live in the Warp and want our souls. Psykers apparently are a far more interesting prey than regular people. And you should understand. The Warp is all around us. Here too the Warp is present. Think of it as a shadow of everything in realspace. But don't worry too much about it right now. The point is that the sanctification aids in protecting you." They arrived at the ramp of the Mastiff and even though Primundo seemed to want to continue the talk, she quickened her pace and mounted the ramp, leaving him behind. She didn't know what to think of the interrogator's explanation, but she knew that she needed to focus on getting the bird home. "I'm sure you'll tell me all about it." she said curtly over her shoulder, already looking forward to flying. 'At least you're still good for that.'


	12. Chapter 12: Excess luggage

Bianca hadn't really understood what Primundo had been saying, but once inside the Mastiff, she stopped thinking about it. The familiar interior of the troop transport made her relax a bit. She saw how Iris was being strapped in, an oxygen mask over her mouth, the stretcher firmly attached to the inner hull. The two other scions were checking out the heavy weapons of the Mastiff, one already trying the angles and margins in which the weapon could be used. It made her miss her own gun crew. Lance-corporal Miroslav, Asser, Rasvik... She continued her path to the cockpit and left Primundo in the hold. He offered an encouragement, but Bianca was no longer listening. When she passed Gomez' little navigator's desk, she had to blink away her tears again. Victorina didn't look up when Bianca dropped in her own seat. Instead the co-pilot was busy getting the machine spirit ready for takeoff. She didn't ask any questions and just continued flicking switches and pushing buttons overhead and on the dashboard. It was a small blessing.

Two minutes later, Bianca pulled the stick towards her. She noticed how she was getting stiff from her wounds and she realized that she wouldn't be up to her usual standard while flying. She looked over to Victorina. The lieutenant was unharmed and seemed to be back in control of her emotions. "Lieutenant Klönner," Bianca opened rather formally, "Take control of the plane." Victorina's first reaction was to give Bianca a panicking look. "Don't fret, Klönner," Bianca said wearily, "I'm not going to do anything psychic. Or whatever it's called. I'm hurt and I'm not on top of my game. Take the stick. I'll keep an eye out for bandits." Bianca saw how Vic reinforced her grip on the stick in front of her. A succinct 'aye, captain' was her response. Finally Bianca could relax a bit. She leaned back in her seat, picking at the yellowish stuffing coming out of it at the side. Her mind was still spinning and she needed to get some order in her thoughts. But before she could, Vic interrupted her.

"Captain... If you..." The lieutenant started hesitantly. Bianca swept her eyes clean, feeling her annoyance rise again. Still, she let the lieutenant speak. That was the least the young woman deserved after her ordeal. "If you think you're wiping the slate clean by giving me command, you're... well, you're mistaken." 'At least she's not cursing you.' Bianca thought, while Vic drew breath for another sentence. "Where are the others? Did they all... Did they all die?" Bianca didn't reply immediately, giving her brain the time to come up with a somewhat coherent answer. "Lieutenant... I'm not giving you command. I've given you the stick. Don't mix them up." Before Victorina could start protesting, Bianca went on. "And yes. They all died. They all died in battle. Fighting the xeno. Assisting the Inquisition on their mission." Even though her voice was sore and flat, Bianca noticed how there was pride hidden in the words. Victorina sharply sucked in her breath, but before she could condemn her, Bianca added: "And yes lieutenant. I'm responsible. I've made the choices. It was my command." For a second Bianca wanted to rub Vic's nose in the fact that she had done nothing different than Vinnius would have done, but in the end she decided against it. She was still enough of an officer to own up to her mistakes. "And you were right that we had no business being there." Bianca considered that it actually was Primundo's fault that they had been there. After all, it was he who had insisted on reinforcing his details with sailors of the Aeronautica. She remembered how she had feared they were just being used as cannon fodder. 'On the other hand, if it hadn't been for your crew and you, these Inquisition types would now have been bleeding to death. So he was right to take us.' Bianca noticed how she was still trying to make up her mind on how she actually felt on what they had done. Somewhere deep beneath the pain of her losses, she still felt she had done the right thing. They had bested the xeno after all. Primundo had gotten what he came for. They were flying home with the prize and the VIP. The mission would be categorized as a success.

Apparently Victorina was thinking things over as well. At least she didn't comment on her admittance. They flew on in silence. Bianca wondered whether she should take Gomez' spot at the auspex. Perhaps that was more useful than staring through the canopy and hoping to catch a glimp of any enemy plane. Especially since they would sooner be on their tail than approaching them head on. Before she could make a decision, Victorina spoke up again. "I guess that Command will say the same. And that you'll get away with it. But you can't get away with your wytchery. I've seen it. The interrogator has seen it. Even if Command won't listen to me, they will not be able to ignore an interrogator." Bianca tilted her head against the headrest of her seat and closed her eyes. 'And then there was that.' she thought. She had hoped Vic would let the subject rest, but she should have known better. She had been hung op on it the moment she had identified Bianca as a psyker. With her eyes closed, she heard the deep droning noise of the engines, the soft beeps and clicks of the instrument panel and her own breathing. It had a calming effect on her, being in this familiar environment. She knew that if she had to pick a spot to spend the rest of her days, it would be here. She never joined in on discussions of the rest of the crew when they argued about which planet would be best to retire. Most of the sailors would call the name of one of the scant few pleasure worlds of the Carceris sector: Rovenna, Custodis or Vilvardes. Others preferred a feral world, where they could become a recluse and forget about the horrors of the war. One or two wanted to return to their homeworld, perhaps hoping that they could still fit in their lives of old. Before they had served with the Aeronautica. Bianca always pitied those men and women. She knew there was no returning to their home world. Hercules would be a fine world to retreat to, but they would never fit in anymore. They would be condemned to reminiscing about how things used to be, when in fact, the world hadn't changed, but they had. No. She had always known that she would stay, and probably die, in the service. But it seemed that the Emperor had something else in store for her.

"You know, Vic." Bianca said eventually. "You're right again. I won't be getting away with this. And honestly, if I am a danger to my crew because of this..." she couldn't bring herself to call herself a wytch, "complication... I won't be taking anyone in battle. My flying days are over. You shouldn't worry about that." Silence was her only answer. Bianca opened her eyes, wanting to see Victorina's, no doubt baffled, expression. Then, she screamed. Instead of seeing the lieutenant peering out of the windscreen, hands on the stick, she saw how the woman lay slumped to the left, her arms hanging limp beside her, her eyes open in a shocked expression although Bianca no longer believed it was because of her confession. The flak vest she wore was drenched in red arterial blood. It still ran over her clothes and chest from a perfect circular cut around her throat. Behind the seat stood Lance Primundo, his blade still wet and red from killing the lieutenant. Bianca's heart skipped a beat when he laid his eyes on her. "Please take back control of the plane captain." There wasn't a trace of his usual smile. There was only cold determination. Bianca didn't respond. The Mastiff started to tip its nose towards the ground. The interrogator casually took hold of the chair of the co-pilot to avoid slipping. "I insist captain. Level the plane." He didn't actually threaten her with the combat knife and he sounded utterly reasonable, but it was because of that attitude Bianca almost screamed again. But she saw the inclination dial creeping towards the red and grabbed the throttle, pulling it towards her to level the plane. "Thank you captain." Primundo said. The man stepped in between the two pilot's seats and released Vic's belt. Next he pulled at her shoulder, making her fall out of the chair, causing her to crash on the floor with a soft thumping sound. He stepped over the body, making sure he didn't step into the blood.

"It seems your flying days aren't at an end just yet, captain Saliaminsky." he said, peering at the nametag on her uniform. "There are still a few missions the Emperor needs your assistance with." He sat down and wiped his blade clean on Vic's flightsuit. After sheating the blade, his hands went through his hair, putting it back in place. Bianca couldn't look at him. She was trying hard not to freak out and only barely succeeding. "Why did you kill her?" she asked, her voice trembling. Primundo shuckled, smiling. "What do you think your life would look like if I had left her alive?" He continued chuckling. "You are a wytch, remember?" The man let the words sink in. An effective attempt at destabilizing the navy captain. "Or, better put, most people would consider you to be a wytch. And they would act on that." Bianca shrugged. "Isn't that how it's supposed to be? I've been a danger to my crew the moment this manifested." Primundo reached out and put a hand on her arm. "Really? Is that so? From what I've seen on the ground, you've been using your talent to save as many of your crew as possible. And although you weren't succesful, you shouldn't blame yourself. I had thought that your lot wouldn't have made it past the entrance of the complex... But I know I wouldn't be standing here if it hadn't been for you. Without you, that warlock would have made minced meat of me. So don't go thinking your talent is a curse." "I can't control it. It's useless." Bianca snapped. Primundo nodded. "I know. Remember I was talking about sanctification? You need to be sanctified. But I can't let you go all the way to Terra. You would be gone for years. And there's no way the Inquisition in this sector can go without you for that long a time. No, no. You'll be coming with me. And I can't use any loose threads when I take you with me. He indicated the body of Klönner laying between their seats.

Bianca was still trying to catch up with Primundo's reasoning. "But how do I get sanctified? You told me every psyker needs to go to Terra and the Golden Throne." Primundo gave her a consoling smile, but Bianca still wasn't looking at him. "There is another way... captain. What is your first name by the way? It looks like we'll be spending some time together. You can call me Lance." With Bianca still staring out of the canopy, Primundo added: "If you like." He chuckled again. "We'll take care of you. After all, we're the Inquisition. There's nothing we can't do when we put our minds to it. You'll come to learn that." And with that last sentence, Primundo concluded the discussion on the subject. "You think you can manage the plane?" he said with his usual panache, almost jumping out of Victorina's seat. He didn't expect an answer, which was made clear by the fact that he just left her in the cockpit with the still warm corpse laying beside her. "My name is Bianca." Bianca whispered and she made the resolution never to trust the man that had left her.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw how the interrogator sat beside the wounded acolyte. In the blink of an eye she snatched Vic's dog tag from the chain around her throat, adding it to the small collection in her pocket. The small iron badges tinkled when she added the latest addition. She was far more impressed by the death of Vic than those of GZ, Miroslav or the gunners. And she knew why. Her co-pilot hadn't fallen in battle, but had been murdered. And there was nothing she could do about it. A few minutes later one of the scions came to the cockpit, grabbed the lieutenant's body by the shoulders and hauled it to the hold. Another one of the silent and inscrutanble men came to the cockpit and asked her to open the cargo ramp at the back of the Mastiff. Bianca didn't need to ask why. Half a minute later Vic's body was tumbling head over heels towards the surface of Vandahl II. The scion had found a rag somewhere and used it to clean the few blood splatters from the dashboard and the floor. He didn't look at her, nor did he comment on his job of erasing the signs of the murder. Bianca wanted to shout at him. She didn't really know why. Clearly the man was just another pawn in the interrogator's chest of regicide pieces. He left like he had come. In complete silence. Which continued the rest of the trip until the tower of V-Rock base voxed her and assigned her a landing pad. Bianca still didn't know what would happen, but she knew that for once she would be happy to see Vinnius' mug.


	13. Chapter 13: Transfer

_+++3.558.988.M41+++_  
_+++Caeruleo Primaris, Subsector Victis, Sector Carceris, Segmentus Obscurus+++ _  
_+++Hive Superbiae - Wing R5 of Pelagus Administratum Majoris+++_

As it turned out, Bianca would never see Vinnius again. She remembered how she had set down the Mastiff rather roughly, straining the support legs and causing a muffled cry of pain of Iris back in the hold. She had expected a welcoming comitee - a guard unit, medics, colonel Hartz - but had encountered nothing of the sort. Instead there had been a single man waiting, half hidden in the shadow of a promethium tank. Bianca had recognized him from the briefing in Hartz' office. He'd stood there, with a briefcase and the large book he'd had with him the first time she'd seen him. A cargo truck had been parked a bit further away. As soon as the ramp had come down, the scions had brought Iris to the truck. Primundo had greeted the other acolyte and had pointed at the cockpit where Bianca had been busy putting the machine spirits to rest. Before she had been able to finish the process, the acolyte had taken her from the cockpit and had ushered her along towards the truck. After that her memory became hazy. It had been a very, very long day after all. She remembered how they had been brought to an unmarked Arvus lighter, guarded by more scions in black carapace. How her wish not to fly it, had been granted and how half an hour later, they were in orbit around Vandahl II. They must have embarked on a larger ship - it had had a large medicae wing - and the last thing she remembered was an out-of-place friendly face of a Mechanicus adept, who, strangely enough hadn't had any facial bionics apart from a rather discrete bionic eye. From that point on, her memory was really sketchy and what remained were mostly recollections of pain and fever dreams.

She leaned back in the comfortable chair in the room Iris had left her in. It must have been an office of someone: a large, rare wooden desk dominated the room, the owner obviously wanting to impress his visitors. The chair behind the desk resembled a throne. It had gullwings at the sides of the carved headrest and the Imperial Aquila was stitched on the fine black upholstering of the backrest. The wood was expertly polished so that it had a deep brown glow. Bianca herself sat on a less impressive chair, one of the two pieces that stood before the desk. These two were also upholstered in the same black fabric, but they lacked the extra woodcarving and armrests. She felt at the back of her head, at the base of her skull. There she touched the still unfamiliar metal plaque, shaped like the icon on the chair before her. It was perhaps three inches wide. It didn't itch or hurt her, but it always felt cold. Although not as cold as the null crown Primundo had used to 'secure' her. He had told her that as long as she wasn't sanctioned, she needed to carry the crown - a rather crude looking steel ring she could carry on her head. Despite its looks she hadn't been the first one to carry it as the inside of the thick band had felt slick, the edges smoothened out by dozens or perhaps even hundreds of restrained psykers. She didn't remember much of the sanctioning even if it had taken place only two weeks ago. Primundo had claimed that they'd had to wait until Iris was back on her feet. Which had taken at least two months - time and warp travel didn't always go well together so Bianca wasn't exactly sure how long it had been exactly. And the headband she had had to wear hadn't helped to keep her focused. The thing had played tricks with her mind. She had felt slowed down, both her wits as her body. She had felt as if she was forgetting something. All the time. A sense that she had misplaced something, but that she couldn't remember what. She had known that it was because she had lacked her powers, her connection to the Warp, but the knowledge itself hadn't taken away the feeling.

She rubbed the eagle again. She didn't know what exactly had happened during the process of sanctification. She remembered that it had been a formal occassion, with Primundo in some sort of uniform she hadn't recognized. It had happened on this world, Caeruleo Primaris, the sector capital. Iris had brought her to a chapel situated in the catacombs of one of the large cathedrals of hive Superbiae. The chapel had been lit by a few dozen candles and Bianca had felt reassured by the gentle expressions of the saintly statues surrounding her. The wooden pews of the chapel - the room only large enough to admit ten or fifteen souls - had been rearranged so that a single pew stood before the altar. Iris had sat her down on it and had invited her to pray to the Emperor. A simple, but beautiful obsidian icon of the Emperor had stood on the altar, next to a tray of medicae instruments. When Bianca had laid her eyes on those, she had felt her heartbeat quickening, but Iris had reassured her that no harm would come to her. "It's quite the contrary," the psyker had said. "You'll feel better than you've ever felt when we're done here." She had smiled at Bianca. In the weeks they had spend together aboard the ship, it had been Iris who had sought her out the most. She had explained how the null crown worked and that the way she felt was only to be expected. Bianca had wanted to confide in her about her thoughts about Primundo, but she hadn't trusted her enough to do so. So when Primundo had started the ceremony she had felt ill-at-ease by the strange words he had spoken and the esoteric symbols he had drawn in the air using the smoke of a brazier. But pretty soon she had lost conscience and when she had woken up, she had found the metal eagle in her neck.

But Iris hadn't been lying. She had felt better than ever. Somehow she had found a grip on her powers. In her mind, it was clear now how she could tap into her mental reservoir and use the power therein to predict a future. She had instantly realized that there were many things that she couldn't do... yet. The path to enlightenment was clear. She would need study and practice to better herself. And she praised herself lucky for the fact that millions of psykers had gone before her. And that she had Iris to lean on.

Suddenly the door opened and Bianca sat up. When she recognized a blue Navy uniform she stood at attention. She had picked up on a doubleheaded eagle over two stars, meaning that she was in the company of a commodore. The reflex to greet a superior officer was still very much ingrained in her, even though Primundo had told her that she had left that life behind. Behind the commodore, who had answered her salute, followed Lance Primundo himself. The interrogator was dressed in unmarked grey fatigues, the bolt pistol at his belt enough to convince most people to let him be. Primundo also carried a red leather briefcase and set it down on the desk, clicking the two locks beside the handle open simultaneously. Bianca could see that there weren't any xeno artifacts or other occult items in the case. Just plain old paperwork. Primundo took out a bundle of sheets of synthparch, the emblem of the Imperial Navy and the Holy Inquisition imprinted at the top of the first page. He laid it down on the desk and pulled an autoquill out of the delicately stitched compartment in the briefcase. Bianca still stood at attention when Primundo wanted to give her the quill. Neither he, nor the commodore had given her permission to be at ease. Primundo frowned before conjuring up his winning smile again. "Well, captain. As soon as you sign this document, your saluting days are over." Bianca could see that the commodore wasn't sharing Primundo's enthusiasm and deep inside she hoped that it was because the Imperial Navy was about to lose an ace pilot. She took the quill and she already bent over the desk to sign when the commodore scraped his throat. "Are you sure of this captain Saliaminsky? You do realize that you will not be serving under interrogator Primundo?" Primundo gave the commodore a disgruntled look for his interruption. Bianca rightened herself. "I'm not?" she asked, surprise sounding through her voice. The interrogator nodded, still eyeing the commodore a bit suspiciously. "Aye Bianca. You're getting transferred to another team of my inquisitor. Apparently their needs are greater than mine."

This was the best news Bianca had heard in weeks. She had known that this day would come, and even though the commodore seemed to imply that she had a choice in the matter, the fact that she was a psyker made returning to the Aeronautica effectively impossible. In the weeks since her departure from Vandahl-II, she had always assumed that Primundo would be her commanding officer. And although the man had visited her regularly, cheerful as ever, she had never forgotten how the man had treated her and her crew. She would always remember Victorina Klönner's fate. His visits hadn't helped to take away the mistrust she felt when she saw him. She looked at the commodore, grateful, even if she knew the man had had no influence what so ever on this latest twist. She decided not to vex Primundo though and she pouted. 'Don't overdo it though. You don't want him pulling strings.' she thought. "That's a shame, but it's not enough to step away from this responsibility. I'm sorry commodore." The man shrugged. It seemed he hadn't expected her to turn down the Inquisition after all. And for a moment Bianca wondered who would have the balls to do such a thing. She scribbled her name and signature under the document and handed the quill to the commodore. In the meanwhile, Primundo walked over to a large cabinet in the corner of the room. He opened it and retrieved a sword, scabbard and a belt. He walked around the desk and sat in the gullwinged chair just as the commodore laid down the quill on the desk. "Thank you commodore. That will be all at this time." The officer was composed enough not to voice his annoyance, but Bianca could tell by the way he saluted the interrogator that the man was mortified.

Primundo waited until the man had left the office before shoving the sword, scabbard and belt over the desk towards Bianca. Bianca didn't touch it. Primundo stood up and walked around the desk and started gathering the signed transfer papers. "You don't really like me, do you?" he asked, a half smile playing at the corner of his mouth, glancing at her sideways. For a second Bianca didn't know what to say. All this time Primundo had been keeping up with appearances. It seemed strange he fell out of his role right at the end. Bianca decided to just be herself. "No. Not really interrogator." Primundo shook his head, mockingly. For a second it looked like he wanted to comment on her candour, but then he decided against it. "Pick up the sword," he said as he put the synthparch bundle in the briefcase. Bianca recognized it as a command. She stood and grabbed the scabbard with her left hand. It was an old looking piece, combining leather and steel, about four feet long with small, silver Imperial Aquila pins on the side. Several were missing though. Then she put her right hand on the grip and immediately she felt something stir inside of her. She pulled the blade out of the scabbard and felt its perfect balance, but more than that, she realized what it was. The sword was a vessel in which she could store her psychic might if only briefly. As she tried a careful swing, her instinct told her that she could use it to channel her powers. That she might even use them to reinforce the blade. "That's a force sword." Primundo said, having turned towards her, the briefcase closed on the desk. "I'm sure by now you realize its use. Don't lose it. We only have a few. But I saw you working with that Eldar sword and you've got quite a bit of potential... acolyte." Bianca looked up. Normally Primundo would call her by her rank. "Make the best use out of it Saliaminsky. Some say the Ordo Hereticus is the little brother of the other two Ordos, but I'm sure you'll soon come to see that those people are wrong. After all, it's us who weed out the good from the bad among the ranks of Malleus and Xeno. And make no mistake: there's quite a few bad apples among our peers."

Bianca didn't really know what she was hearing, but Primundo apparantly didn't want to go into detail. "Your new interrogator will pick you up here. She won't be long." Primundo had already been walking towards the door when he stopped and turned around. His shoulders sagged a bit and he gave her a sad smile. Bianca had seen Primundo smiling in all kinds of way, but never like this. He stretched out his arm, offering his hand and for the first time Bianca felt like he was being sincere with her. "It's alright if you don't like me, Bianca. I can see why you would. But if you're thinking that my ruthlessness is a flaw in this business, or that I'm the only one within our ranks that displays it, you'll soon notice you're sorely mistaken." Bianca grabbed his hand and shook it. "You've saved my life out there acolyte. I will not forget. May the Emperor watch over you." Primundo let go of her hand and turned around. By the time he was at the door, his posture had changed again. Bianca could see that pride and selfconfidence had taken the upper hand again. The interrogator closed the door behind him and left her alone in the luxurious office of the unknown Administratum prefectus.

Bianca swung the blade a few more times before sheating it in the scabbard. She put the belt around her waist and wondered whether Primundo had been honest for the first time since they met. She wondered what he had to gain by being so forthcoming the moment their ways split. And she mused on the fact that he understood why she didn't like him. Her hand went in her pocket and she retrieved a little lho-stick case. She put it on the desk as she sat back down in her chair. She sighed. Then she opened the little case. Inside she saw the tags of her team on the right side of the box, stuck behind the elastic band which would normally secure the lho-sticks. On the other side she had etched to the best of her capacities - so not very good - an image of the Emperor. If she was honest, no one would recognize the Emperor in the collection of scratches she had put in with a borrowed combat knife, but she knew what it meant. The tag of GZ was the first she retrieved. She still felt lost without her friend. Now that she had lost him, she had quite often thought about him and she wondered whether the man had wanted to be more than a friend. She would never know. The other tag she retrieved was Vic's. Lovingly she rubbed it with her thumb. The light of the lumenglobe above the desk reflected on the shiny piece of metal, a sign that Bianca had let the tag go through her fingers many times since the moment she had snatched it from the lieutenant's body. After a moment she put them back in the little case, sending a prayer to the Emperor to look after their souls. She would never forget the sacrifice they had brought. And she would never forget how Vic had found her end.

She was startled when the door opened again. A woman stood in the opening, her appearance largely concealed by a black cloak, the hood pulled over her eyes. "Saliaminsky?" she asked, her voice firm but hoarse. "Interrogator Silverback. You're in my cadre now. Get up and let's go." Bianca stood up and crossed the room, setting her first paces on the road of her Inquisition carreer. "Good luck Bunny." whispered the voice at the back of her head. "I'll be with you all the time."

* * *

Author's note:

With this story, I've finished a series of four prelude stories, each of them presenting a character that you'll (soon) be able to read about in another story. I'm under the impression a lot of people started reading this and expected an Imperial Guard focuses story, didn't found what they were expecting and let it go, so I would like to thank you for reading it to the end. I hope you enjoyed what you read. Comments are still very welcome. If you liked what you saw, I'll blatently point you to the three other stories I've written. Expect the same style, but (very) different perspectives.

I would like to give a word of thanks to _Disciple of Ember_ who has kindly given me a few pointers on the nature of the Eldar & their combat capabilities.

Thanks again for reading.


End file.
